


Varying Definitions of 'Normal'

by stackcats



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 16:35:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stackcats/pseuds/stackcats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This started life as a fill for a prompt found while scouring the kinkmeme:</p><p>"Five times the morning after was hideously awkward/shouty/involved one of them doing a runner before the other woke up - and one time it was different."</p><p>It has evolved from there, and while it no longer fits the prompt, it's about a relationship full of awkward and shouting and people doing a runner, and how it becomes something different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

This… this is not his own bed, it dawns on Jamie round about the fourth or fifth time he pries open his aching eyes. He’s fairly sure this is not even his own flat, which he shares with a couple of other guys to save on rent. He can’t see much at this stage beyond the eggshell-blue duvet and the white wall somewhere in the distance, but the biggest clue that he’s in a whole other part of town is the presence (albeit knocked onto the floor) of what looks suspiciously like a scatter cushion. Jamie had always just assumed scatter cushions were how Ikea tried to make you think they were a funky kind of store, he didn’t think anyone actually _bought_ them until he started this new job and began hanging around posh fuckers all the time.

 

He closes his eyes again on account of them being tiny little portcullises and the daylight being an invading army intent on raping and pillaging the inside of his skull. It takes a few moments for his entire body to check in and file its morning report, but, yes, suspicions confirmed – everything fucking hurts. Everything. Head, neck, arms, guts, legs, bollocks, and spine, all either caning or churning or potentially missing in action. Shit. His brothers were right, hangovers really did get nasty when you got older.

 

He groans and opens his eyes again, wondering where the fuck he is and how the fuck he got here.

 

The cushion is directly in Jamie’s line of bleary sight. It’s lilac with an attractive (to the sort of people who buy scatter cushions) pattern of white swirls across it, but it won’t be for much longer because Jamie might have forgotten all about the events of last night but his stomach certainly hasn’t; it’s lurching hideously, and so is his vision, and the entire room joins in with the lurching, tumbling away and away as Jamie optimistically attempts to propel himself off the bed and in the general direction of a bathroom.

 

He lands face-first on the floor, which is unfortunately carpeted (soft cream shag), and just about manages to lever himself up with his arms before something hits the big red _eject_ button in his guts and everything he consumed in the last twelve hours (wasn’t there a party?) comes up in a sort of hideous fast action rewind.

 

Puking normally makes him feel better, as though purging himself of the poison, but it’s occurred to Jamie that he’s still pished and that the sunlight streaming into the room is scouring a huge red melanoma onto his soul. He actually feels worse, if at all possible, because now the room also smells like sick, and the smell of sick makes him want to puke at the best of times. He rolls onto his side, clutches his guts, and moans.

 

His head hurts even worse now that he’s fallen on it.

 

“I’m dying,” he groans. He wonders if you can die from a hangover, then moves swiftly onto hoping that he can, because there’s no way he can live like this for any length of time.

 

Then a voice that must belong to his guardian angel to bring such sweet promises says, “Aye, ‘cause I’m gonnae fucking kill you.”

 

“Great,” says Jamie, and heaves again. His entire body is being wrung out like a washcloth until he’s empty and dry, and then it’s wrung out some more for good measure, and then he rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling and whimpers a little bit.

 

Something is happening in the as-yet unidentified room. There’s another person in it with him (guardian angel?) but they seem to be having a problem with the walls colliding into them. This doesn’t surprise Jamie because they keep spinning around instead of staying in one place like proper walls, so he lies there patiently as the other person staggers about, and then, after a few moments, a door slams. Or maybe it just shuts normally, but it sounds like a slam to Jamie.

 

A few moments later, someone (…guardian angel? Please?) drops a lot of water on him, and drops more water and some towels all around him, and there’s a strong smell of bleach. Jamie coughs a bit, but he doesn’t really mind the water. Feels cold, which is good. He was starting to sweat.

 

“Coul’ye,” he slurs, his tongue feeling like a very thick, very dead vole in his mouth, “kill me faster please? Ah’m not normally impatient but I’d quite like to die very f’kn soon…“

 

A face looms into his vision, and it’s not a guardian angel at all. It’s Malcolm. His boss. Jamie’d know that face anywhere.

 

“Awfuck,” he groans. “How’d you get in here?”

 

“That’s _my_ fucking line,” Malcolm growls.

 

Jamie blinks up at him and feels a strange sense of empathy. Malcolm looks exactly how he, Jamie, feels right now. Which is to say, he looks like the apocalypse.

 

“You look _really_ shit,” Jamie tells him.

 

Malcolm acknowledges this by sitting down heavily on the bed and burying his face in his hands. More specifically, Jamie decides, Malcolm looks like something out of The Dark Crystal, but operated by an inept apprentice puppeteer.

 

They stay there like that for a bit, in a sort of dramatic tableau depicting the tragedy of man when combined with scotch and cigars and teeny little finger sandwiches. Jamie decides this is fine, really. If he can just stay here and never have to move or do anything ever again, he might not really have to die after all. Things are spinning around him a little bit more slowly than before thanks to the water, and the puke smell has mostly been replaced by a Dettol smell, so all in all things are looking up.

 

Eventually, Malcolm (Jamie had almost forgotten about him in the twelve seconds since he last spoke), his own voice thick with morning-after, says “Why the fuck are you naked?”

 

Jamie looks down at himself the best he can. Malcolm must be even more of a genius than advertised because Jamie had not previously realised that he _was_ naked. Clever of Malcolm to pick up on that.

 

“Dunno,” he says. It’s not like Malcolm is wearing very much himself, so Jamie doesn’t get why he’s being so confrontational about it. Besides, there are far bigger problems than Jamie’s nudity, including but not limited to the colossal headache grinding its way through his skull like a glacier of icy regret.

 

“Got any Panadol?” he asks.

 

“You’re naked,” says Malcolm, ignoring him, “in mah fucking house.”

 

 _Ah-ha_. Malcolm’s house. Malcolm’s bedroom, then. Mystery solved. Fucking cushion-buying poofter with his soft carpet and his feather duvet…

 

And that’s when last night hits Jamie in the back of the skull like a coconut swingball.

 

There was an event. Some big fucking event, he doesn’t know what, some celebration, maybe a, a, maybe a wedding, or maybe they – no, that’s right, they _won_ something…

 

“We won something,” he ventures out loud.

 

Malcolm nods, and his expression suggests he regrets doing so instantly. “Election,” he grits out from between clenched teeth.

 

Right. Election night. Big win, big booze-up, lots of people dancing and eating and drinking and smoking… Jamie remembers feeling really, really horny and trying to eat all the sandwiches, though he suspects those two things are not particularly related. But the sandwich-eating led to Malcolm hauling him outside by the collar. Malcolm hauling him by the collar combined with the horniness to result in Jamie shoving him up against the wall outside in the alleyway and kissing him, silencing Malcolm in mid don’t-eat-all-the-fucking-food rant.

 

Suddenly, out of nowhere, that memory is clear as daylight. He can remember everything. The smooth feel of Malcolm’s collar as he grabbed it, the chafe of stubble against his lip, the thrill of pleasure when Malcolm kissed him back, grabbed his shirt, pulled him close – and the shock of loss as Malcolm shoved him off a few seconds later.

 

He remembers Malcolm saying _not here_ , and vanishing back inside. He remembers following. Then he doesn’t remember much other than lots more alcohol and a car and, and… he thinks he might have, maybe, _slightly_ sucked Malcolm off in the back of the car.

 

“D’you remember the car?” he asks.

 

“No,” says Malcolm. “Wait… yes. Fuck.” His face vanishes behind his hands again.

 

Jamie can’t remember very much about the events between the car and his current state of indecency and disgrace on the floor of Malcolm’s bedroom, but he can do the basic maths required to reach the conclusion that he has fucked his boss. Or maybe his boss fucked him. He still hasn’t got Malcolm quite figured out on that score, and is rather annoyed that he can’t remember.

 

“Yer arse sore?” he asks, just in case.

 

“Fuck off.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“No. I mean _fuck off_.” Malcolm throws something at him. It’s Jamie’s shirt. His trousers hit him in the face, and then – yep – there’s his pants. There’s socks and tie around somewhere, but he doesn’t spare them much thought as he pulls on his clothes. He’s suddenly quite cold, and the world is now spinning slowly enough that his priorities are shifting and he’s remembering additional, peripheral facts, including the fact that he’s supposed to be at work later today, and also that, yeah, he has to work with _this_ man. Calling in sick is not a viable option.

 

Malcolm staggers up and forwards, and leans against the wall for a moment, eyes screwed shut. Jamie fumbles with his buttons; he doesn’t remember buying a fucking Rubik’s shirt, but it’s either that or his knuckles are all on backwards. He’s just about got a decent number of buttons through their appropriate holes when the lilac throw-cushion is (true to its name) thrown at the back of his head.

 

“Out,” Malcolm growls, “of my fucking house. _Now_.”

 

The door slams again. Jamie gets a grip on the foot of the bed and drags himself painfully to his feet, the world lurching and spinning violently again. He pauses for a moment, getting his breath back, arse perched on the foot of the bed where last night he made what was quite possibly the worst mistake of his career. Malcolm has locked himself in the bathroom, the sound of running water scratching at the inside of Jamie’s skull from a room away. When he pushes himself upright his knees don’t seem to entirely work like proper human knees, but he somehow manages to stagger from the room and onto the landing, where he finds a familiar shoe.

 

His other shoe is half-way down the stairs. He leans against the bannister panting for breath, wondering if medieval plague victims felt as shit as this, before he can muster the fortitude to bend down and put his shoes on (still no clue where his socks might be).

 

When he passes the kitchen the urge to stop and make coffee is overwhelming, but Malcolm is right – he has to be out of here, right the fuck now, despite the fact that he doesn’t actually know where Malcolm lives or how to get home from wherever-the-fuck part of London this is. Doesn’t matter. He’s vaguely aware, somewhere in the back of his mind, that Malcolm is in the middle of a messy divorce. Messy divorces are something Jamie has vowed never to get involved in since his own. Even the tidiest, least-messy of divorces are somehow a hundred times more personal and intimate than the marriage that caused them, and basically Jamie has no idea – she could be in the house somewhere for all he knows, or due to come home at any minute. That’s the thought that spurs him through the front door and out into the chilly spring dawn, grabbing his coat from where he apparently dumped it on the doorstep and high-tailing it away-the-fuck from here.


	2. Chapter 2

It becomes the Thing They Do No Talk About, but Jamie is pretty shit at getting on and ignoring elephants when they’re taking up space in his office. When he’s not running around like the proverbial blue-arsed fly, harassing the press and filling in Malcolm’s role of shouting at freshly-minted ministers when he’s away somewhere else (usually shouting at other ministers), it’s the Thing They Do Not Talk About that Jamie’s mind inevitably rests on.

 

He’s on the tube, and there it is, the Thing. Little shards of that night have been coming back to him ever since, like finding tiny pieces of a smashed glass in the carpet with your bare foot weeks after the accident itself. He’s trying to read the _Metro_ between Green Park and Westminster when his hindbrain decides that now is the time to present a previously unrecalled flash of Malcolm’s bedroom ceiling coupled with the sensation of enthusiastic lips, tongue, and – yes – teeth obsessing over his nipple. He’s forced to lower the paper to preserve his dignity, because fuck – if Malcolm can pull off something like that when _pished_ …

 

Frustration makes Jamie very, very angry, but he’s aware that punching the furniture on the tube is probably an efficient way to get a locked door put between himself and the rest of the world. He supresses the impulse and does his very best to put the persistent thought from his mind, but wherever it goes from there it doesn’t appear to like it as much as it likes the inside of Jamie’s head because it’s back again within a couple of minutes. Malcolm. His mouth. On Jamie’s nipple. He doesn’t know why he’s fixating on that particular moment here and now on the tube – apparently he likes his nipples licked? No one’s ever done that to him before, with intent and purpose and boundless enthusiasm… have they? At least, his virgin-until-they-met ex-wife never did anything of the sort, and nor have any of the subsequent three-month relationships with girls met through work friends, or the one-night stands, or the closeted guy from the _Mirror_ , or… Actually, come to think of it, it’s not just the nipple thing that draws him back to that moment. It’s Malcolm’s arm across his belly, pinning him to the bed, the genius combination of tongue and fingernails (along Jamie’s ribs), then gentle finger tips (across his belly) and a short, quick, nip of teeth pinching at some of his most sensitive skin. It’s the casual dominance of a man who three minutes later had Jamie’s cock in his mouth and a hand on his arse, encouraging him to thrust.

 

Well, then. Thank fuck for that, there’s the answer. He’s fixating on Malcolm because the auld bastard’s creative in the sack, he knows how to mix things up and make it interesting. Good for him, and good for Jamie for having a go, and it’s his own stupid fault he can barely remember it. Right? Good. Now, lay it to rest.

 

He hops off the train and bounds up the steps instead of taking the escalator, a veritable, if clichéd, spring in his step now he’s resolved to move on from The Thing That Happened On Election Night. He determines not to think about Malcolm at all today, and in actual fact it feels rather good to be free of him. It lasts through the first couple of meetings of the day, Jamie in full-on Bonnie Prince Charming mode, woo-ing the press and flirting with anyone who crosses his path. It lasts through lunch, where he flirts a free pie out of the girl at Gregg’s, through a very pleasant afternoon of making fart noises whenever Steve Fleming opens his mouth to speak, and in fact Jamie feels positively liberated right up until Malcolm snags him by the collar as he’s heading out the door at six-thirty.

 

“Hey, you, Bilbo Baggins. We’re working late tonight.”

 

Malcolm shoves a stack of folders at Jamie, who thinks he might have swallowed his own tongue even though he’s read that isn’t medically possible. He watches Malcolm stalk away down the corridor. Forgetting about him really was an admirable plan, but all Jamie can think about now is The Thing That Happened and how badly he wants it to happen again.

 

Scowling and grumbling under the weight of the folders, Jamie hurries after Malcolm, who’s retreated into his own office. Jamie follows him in and kicks the door shut behind them.

 

These sorts of moments happen at a pretty regular frequency over the next few weeks. During the day things are generally normal, though Malcolm has started treating him a lot like a sort of demonic message boy, sending him off on bollocking errands when he apparently has better things to do himself. Either he’s trying to get Jamie out of the office and away from him, or the extent of his usefulness is being tested, or perhaps it’s both at once. But Malcolm also gets him to work late a couple of nights a week, though Jamie is not entirely privy to exactly what it is they’re working on. Malcolm always gives Jamie something tangential but apparently essential to work on while he himself generally makes an enormous mess of the desk and swears at his computer a lot, Jamie sneaking furtive glances the whole time but he never catches his boss looking back. It’s not always just the two of them, sometimes Frankie or a couple of the other lads in Malcolm’s inner circle are there with them after hours, and Jamie learns none of them really has much idea what they’re doing either – each seems to have a piece of it, none of them has the whole.

 

Jamie attempts to seduce Malcolm a few unsuccessful times when they’re alone - verbal flirting is jokingly reciprocated if Malcolm’s in the mood but never goes anywhere, and Jamie’s hand on his thigh is just thoroughly ignored. Signals are being mixed, blended with ice, and served in a tall glass with an umbrella in it for Jamie to sit there are attempt to discern the flavours. He considers just shoving Malcolm up against a filing cabinet and kissing him to see what happens, but there’s so much work to be done the moment never presents itself.

 

After a couple of months of this Jamie’s there for the final showdown with Steve Fleming, when Malcolm finally boots him out the door and claims the job for himself.

 

(Jamie discovers, later, that what they had all been doing after hours was tantamount to fuck all – Malcolm was just creating a hazy smokescreen of subterfuge and scuttling minions to drive Steve insane with suspicion that he was being plotted against. Malcolm’s great plan was to make Steve think there _was_ a plan. The whole point was to throw him off his game and open him up for some very real, non-imaginary fuck-ups. Jamie decides that Malcolm is the definition of a genius.)

 

Steve’s sacking is cause for celebration in the office. People generally know where they stand with Malcolm, even if they fervently hope that it’s not on a narrow ledge over a thirty-foot drop, and even if they do subconsciously put as much furniture between themselves and him as possible. You can read Malcolm pretty easily too, Jamie has found – it’s nice to know when he bowls into the room whether or not you’re going to get your head bitten off, though the answer is usually _yes, yes you are_ and the best you can do is hope your neck isn’t gristly and it happens nice and quick. Still, a change is refreshing, and the celebration becomes literal at around four in the afternoon when someone cracks open a bottle of Scotch with too many awkward vowels in the name for the English to cope with, and toasts Steve’s better-late-than-never departure from the scene. Jamie decides to boldly go one step further, and raises a toast to Malcolm, and that’s when he _does_ catch the boss looking at him with something calculating in his expression. Jamie ventures a grin and is rewarded with what is almost certainly Malcolm’s version of a genuine smile; his mouth barely moves, but there’s something mischievous about his eyes for a moment before he looks away again. Jamie is left with the sensation that he’s passed some sort of test, though he doesn’t have a clue what it was.

 

There’s still work to be done, but the party atmosphere holds sway and Malcolm’s communications team finds itself in the local pub after they empty out of the office a few hours later. It’s a hot night so they take over the beer garden, shoving benches together and setting up a tab at the bar. The air is thick with cigarette smoke and gossip and the sort of humidity that promises rain and thunder, one of England’s increasingly rare summer storms.

 

Jamie sits to Malcolm’s right and it takes him two and a half pints to realise Malcolm isn’t really drinking anything. So Jamie, on instinct, slows down too. He gets in a round, though, when it’s his turn, enlisting the help of Kev the intern to carry a tray full of drinks, but when he turns round from the bar it’s Malcolm standing behind him, coat slung over one shoulder.

 

“You’re not leaving?” Jamie asks.

 

“Aye. Long day, things to do, et-fucking-cetera.”

 

Malcolm glances at the door as Kev takes the tray of drinks from Jamie, says _seeya tomorrow, Mr Tucker_ , and fucks off back outside.

 

“Truth be told, I don’t call a night in the pub with this pile of cunts much of a fucking party.” Malcolm bares his teeth, but Jamie can see that glint of honest humour in his eyes again. “Thought I’d go and have my own celebration.”

 

“What, fluffy slippers and a mug of Horlicks, see if there’s anything on telly worth wanking to?”

 

“Something like that.”

 

Jamie’s got a pint in each hand so Malcolm’s companionable fare-well pat on the shoulder looks perfectly normal, but Jamie feels something fairly heavy drop into his shirt pocket and as Malcolm brushes past to head for the exit he says, “Give it at least an hour.” Then the crowd shifts and he’s gone.

 

Jamie delivers the drinks to their eager recipients then heads to the gents where he locks himself in a stall, just in case. The thing in his pocket turns out to be a door key on a heavy, white, plastic fob. On one side of the fob is the name and address of a hotel – _Red Oak Suites_ – and on the other side is the number 315. He puts it back in his pocket, then takes it out again just to make sure he isn’t imagining things. Then he puts it in his trouser pocket where its outline is less visible.

 

Well, fuck, he couldn’t ask for more of a neat, triple-distilled signal than that. Jamie was so sure he had his work cut out for him if he wanted a repeat of election night, and then Malcolm literally drops this on him? He tries to remember when the fuck Malcolm snuck out of the office today to book a fucking _hotel room_ for them, but his brain has gone fizzy and he couldn’t remember his own mammy’s name if you asked him right now.

 

It’s the longest hour of Jamie’s life. He sits in Malcolm’s vacated seat and forces himself to concentrate on a conversation he couldn’t begin to give a fuck about even if the hotel key wasn’t burning a hole in his pocket. It’s a testament to Jamie’s roaring libido that even the weight of it against his leg is enough to give him a semi. But he sits tight and waits out the hour – Malcolm being a total smartarse with that exact wording, as Jamie’s well aware that if Malcolm had told him an hour, he’d be out of there in forty minutes. But Malcolm said _at least_ an hour, so he hangs in there for exactly sixty minutes and then makes up some shit about babysitting his nieces, cuffs Frankie’s ear when he calls him a lightweight, and high-tails it out of there.

 

Thus begins his quest for what must be the only hotel left in London that uses a sodding _key_ rather than a sort of disposable swipey card thing. Red Oak turns out to essentially be a trap for American and Japanese tourists – it’s a sprawling, partially-renovated Georgian building with a couple of hundred tiny rooms furnished and decorated with an eclectic jumble of plush, dusty anachronisms ranging from the Restoration to around 1956. Jamie feels a bit like a sore thumb as he ambles into the reception lobby, but Malcolm’s no idiot, he didn’t choose this place by sticking a pin in a map – the stairs sweep up to the sides of the lobby, and the girl on the desk doesn’t even glance up when the door opens, she’s far too busy wearily outlining the routes of the open-top bus tours for a middle-aged couple wearing shorts and rucksacks, and Jamie is able to trot through a knot of milling tourists and up the stairs un-noticed, one hand on the scuffed brass bannister, the other clenched around the key in his pocket.

 

There might be a lift somewhere, but he doesn’t have the patience to stand still in one, so he jogs up three flights of stairs and peers along the corridor. 301-310 that way, so… Jamie’s just starting to wonder whether this is an elaborate prank and he’s about to burst into some poor wee things’ honeymoon suite, but to be perfectly honest he doesn’t care. If there was a 1% chance of finding Malcolm behind door 315 and a 99% chance of African honey bees, he’d still not hesitate even though he’s allergic to bees and had to be hospitalised as a child after splatting one with his hand.

 

As it happens, Malcolm _is_ inside room 315. It’s a tiny, stuffy little room with its one sash window open and the setting sun streaming in. Whoever decorated in here was either colour-blind or really liked burgundy and brown; there’s a heavy quilted cover on the bed, and the one armchair in the corner is over-stuffed brown velvet, while the carpet looks like it’s older than the building itself and it’s possible the entire hotel was constructed around it.

 

Malcolm’s sitting on the bed, one ankle crossed over the other, reading (to Jamie’s mild surprise) a Terry Pratchett paperback, one of the ones about the wizard. He says “Lock it” as he delicately folds down the corner to mark his page. Jamie turns to lock the door and when he turns back Malcolm (how the _fuck_ does he do it?) is right behind him again.

 

Jamie grabs him, just lunges and grabs, and ends up with one fistful of shirt collar and another of hair, and he pulls Malcolm down and kisses him. This was apparently the right thing to do because Malcolm makes a sound more commonly heard from things living on the Savannah, surges forwards to shove Jamie against the door, and kisses him back. Jamie’s head hits the wood but it doesn’t matter, he’s got both hands in Malcolm’s hair now, holding him here, not that Malcolm is going anywhere fast – he’s got a fist full of Jamie’s shirt, his other hand splayed against the door, and he’s launching one hell of a retaliatory assault on Jamie’s mouth. Teeth nip his lips, Malcolm’s tongue shoves into his mouth, all enthusiasm and little technique, hot breath and rough stubble, and Jamie finds himself panting heavily when Malcolm breaks away. Jamie automatically leans in for more, but Malcolm holds him back.

 

“If we’re gonnae do this - ” Malcolm begins, but Jamie pushes forward and bites him on the jaw.

 

“We’re fucking doing this,” He says.

 

“One rule,” Malcolm presses, but he doesn’t stop Jamie from mouthing at his throat; little vibrations tingle Jamie’s lips when Malcolm speaks. “We don’t _talk_ about it. I tell you when and where, and that’s it. No negotiations. If you don’t show up I’ll make do with a wank, if I’m not there you can assume something far more fucking important than you has come up, and we _do not_ discuss it.”

 

“Right,” Jamie purrs, flicking his tongue against Malcolm’s lip. “I get it. First rule of fuck-club…”

 

He doesn’t know whether to be more amazed that he’s here with Malcolm _now_ , or that Malcolm has apparently decided to schedule this as a recurring appointment, so he settles on being just generally amazed at everything, and shoves his tongue into Malcolm’s mouth again just to make sure it really _isn’t_ an elaborate prank as previously suspected – if it is a prank, then Malcolm’s really, _really_ into it, because he holds onto the back of Jamie’s neck and keeps the kiss going as he manoeuvres them the short distance onto the bed.

 

Jamie finds himself in Malcolm’s lap, his shirt being tugged out of his trousers and pried open. He goes for Malcolm’s tie, slips the knot, throws it at the chair, and sets to work on fiddly little shirt buttons. He’s so hard he’s amazed he hasn’t already passed out from lack of blood to the brain, and he feels like he’s sweating already, the heat of the evening not helping with that at all nor does it help that it’s taking Malcolm forever to get Jamie’s shirt off, a feeling that is apparently mutual as Malcolm swats Jamie’s hands away from his collar.

 

“Off,” he barks, quickly flicking open his own buttons. “Shirt off now.”

 

Jamie just pulls the damn thing over his head and drops it on the floor. As soon as they’re both shirtless he tackles Malcolm and pushes him down onto the bed, sliding along his body, skin against skin. Jamie nuzzles his face into Malcolm’s throat, kissing whatever he can reach, and bucks his hips, finding friction. Malcolm allows it for a moment, then hooks an arm and a leg around Jamie and wrestles him onto his back, kisses his mouth, his neck, his collar bone, the curve of his shoulder. Jamie recalls that flash of memory from the first time, and steers Malcolm’s head where he wants him. With a reptilian grin, Malcolm very gently pulls at Jamie’s nipple with his teeth.

 

“Fuck,” Jamie moans. The sensation crackles all the way to his cock, his hips coming up off the bed. Malcolm does it again, the flick of a tongue joining in this time, and Jamie hears himself shout out loud as Malcolm reaches a hand between his legs at the same time, squeezes him through his trousers, then opens his fly with a practiced ease that Jamie files away to jealously obsess over later. The remains of his clothes are tugged away and Jamie is exposed to the warm night air, Malcolm moving quickly downwards, flicking his tongue over Jamie’s navel, biting at the jut of his hipbone, and then, without much warning, he wraps a hand round the base of Jamie’s cock and his lips around the head.

 

Jamie is so tightly wound that it’s almost overwhelming, the clever slide of Malcolm’s tongue, the measured squeeze of his hand, the fucking _sight_ of him, when Jamie opens his eyes – Malcolm Tucker sucking his cock, and then Malcolm looking back up at him for a second, the predatory glint in his eyes invoking all the prehistoric tiny-mammal instincts still bound up in Jamie’s DNA and sending a thrill of adrenaline through him, a boldness that inspires him to thrust into Malcolm’s mouth, which is probably one of the best decisions he’s made tonight because Malcolm can’t be one-upped. Jamie wants deeper, he’s getting fucking _deeper_. He drops his head back and groans, his feet scrabbling a bit pathetically against the quilt, at once both thrilled and surprised at how _good_ at this Malcolm is. He’s got a hand on Jamie’s balls, the pressure just right, and one long finger pressing up behind them, rubbing just _there_ even as he’s swallowing Jamie down.

 

Jamie doesn’t know whether he’s more desperate to come or to keep this going as long as possible, but he’s not exactly in the decision-making seat and Malcolm is clearly enjoying himself thoroughly. That in itself – watching Malcolm sucking him off and loving it – is like crack cocaine to Jamie. He’s come to the conclusion that he’ll just have to go with it when Malcolm pulls off him, takes his cock in hand instead, squeezes just a little too tight.

 

“Are ye gonnae just fucking lie there all evening like a virgin bride while I do all the fucking work?”

 

Jamie calls him a cunt and puts a foot to his chest, shoving him onto his side. Malcolm is still half-dressed, which just won’t fucking do at all, so Jamie basically tackles him when he tries to get back up to a sitting position, yanks his trousers down over his skinny arse, and sits on him, Malcolm’s cock wedged pleasingly between Jamie’s thigh and his balls.

 

“Better,” says Malcolm, before Jamie shuts him up with another kiss. Malcolm works his fingers into Jamie’s hair, locks a leg over Jamie’s thigh, and meets every thrust of Jamie’s tongue with his own. It doesn’t last long, though, before Malcolm gets bored of lying on his back and rolls them sideways. Jamie doesn’t entirely approve – he was enjoying having Malcolm trapped beneath him – but lets him indulge in a sense of false security right up until Malcolm’s fingers slide between Jamie’s arse cheeks, at which stage Jamie decides fuck it, no, he spends all day every day following this man’s lead, and shoves Malcolm back down onto the mattress. There’s a few minutes of struggling – Jamie almost falls back when Malcolm gets him in the ribs with an elbow – but the third time Jamie pins him down, Malcolm stays pinned. Jamie doesn’t entirely trust him, and keeps him in place with an arm across his chest until Malcolm’s foot strokes up the back of Jamie’s thigh then kicks him on the bum. There’s a little jolt of friction between them, and then all games are off – Jamie ruts his hips and Malcolm’s head drops back against the pillows, his back arching, and Jamie thinks _fuck yes_ as they find a frantic little rhythm.

 

There’s a strategically placed bottle of lube on the bedside table, along with a couple of condoms though Jamie decides Malcolm was being rather more than optimistic there. The lube, though, that’s good – Jamie grabs it and pumps some onto his palm, which he shoves between them, giving Malcolm a few quick, firm strokes to thoroughly disarm him before wrapping his hand around both of them. There’s no objections from Malcolm – in fact there’s no more talking at all, just panting breath and the sound of skin against skin and the occasional muttered curse, and then it’s over too fast. Jamie comes hard, his eyes screwed shut, frantic little groans escaping lips, and Malcolm’s shuddering beneath him moments later in almost complete silence.

 

Jamie drops like a stone, buries his face in the curve of Malcolm’s neck and shoulder, and draws in a ragged breath. There’s a moment, a tiny moment (and Jamie wonders in years to come if he imagined it) where Malcolm scratches affectionate fingers against the little stubbly hairs on the back of Jamie’s neck, making him almost purr with contentment. But then Malcolm shoves him away and gets off the bed. Which is fair enough, Jamie supposes, as they’re both splattered with cum and liable to get stuck together if someone doesn’t move. He flops on his back, stretches out on the bed, and watches Malcolm retreat into the bathroom.

 

It’s properly dark now but no less warm despite the patter of fat raindrops against the window, so Jamie kicks the quilt off the bed and onto the floor, spreads himself out like a starfish on the sheets, and tries to will the piss-weak breeze to touch his skin. The post-orgasm fuzziness is fading, a clarity replacing it, and a tiny little voice in the back of his head asking if he’s done being a fucking moron yet, to which the answer is clear when Malcolm comes back from the bathroom and settles back onto the bed. No, he’s not done, not by a long fucking shot. He’d still walk into the bee-room if there was a tiny glimmer of a chance of this happening again.

 

Jamie wonders, as he dozes off, just how thoroughly fucked he is.

 

When he wakes up in the pre-dawn darkness Malcolm is long gone, and the tightening in Jamie’s throat, the horrible little swoop of vertigo when he realises he’s alone in this stuffy room, tells him that he is _fucked_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to GroteskBurlesque for beta-reading this part.

It becomes a pattern. Malcolm, as promised, decides when and where, and Jamie finds out usually by means of express post to the PO Box he’s kept ever since one of his room-mates started opening everyone else’s letters. Once, Malcolm hands him a folder and tells him to shred it, for no one else’s eyes, and there on the top sheet is an address. That one is a bit of a gamble, but Jamie shows up anyway to the massive, generic, cardboard cut-out hotel where Malcolm fucks him over the foot of the bed and then orders room service and turns on the telly. Jamie steals the remote and puts the footy on. They spend an evening eating chips and arguing about the idiots on the screen, and when Jamie gets up to piss at three a.m. Malcolm is gone.

 

And so it goes, a couple of times a month – more frequently, when there’s time and if Malcolm decides they can get away with it. Malcolm is sublimely careful about the whole thing, to the extent that Jamie is grateful he’s taken control of the arrangement. Jamie, after all, would possibly never have realised that occasionally repeating the same hotel (one near Heathrow where a man in a suit checking in alone was the least remarkable thing the receptionist ever saw) was actually a good idea, and, as promised, the Thing (as Jamie still thinks of it) is never spoken about, and certainly never mentioned to anybody else. The evenings always follow the same basic routine of sex, food, TV, and Malcolm vanishing at some point during the night, which Jamie can live with since three out of four of those are his favourite things. Malcolm leaving is one of those things he simply can’t think about in too much depth, because he’s not entirely sure he _wants_ to know how he feels about it. It’s all very fucking straightforward, just sex and escapism, which is fine, except for a few rare occasions, usually when alcohol has been thrown into the mix and Jamie is balls-deep inside a highly-aroused and trembling Malcolm, and – well, the first time he thinks he’s just imagined it, but the second time there’s no mistaking the ragged, desperate _Jamie_ breathed against his neck.

 

And that’s good, it _is_ , because it means Malcolm’s here with him because he wants to be and not just because Jamie’s willing and there’s someone else who isn’t.  But it’s bad because he _can’t fucking think about it_. His own brain has thrown up a barrier with a big sign painted in foot-high red letters saying “turn back”. And it’s not (this is as far as he can go with the subject) even as though it’s a massive fucking deal, is it? Malcolm says his name all the fucking time, why shouldn’t he say it in bed? There’s a difference, of course, between JAMIE hollered at a billion decibels along Whitehall, and _Jamie_ whispered in a moment of – and _there’s_ the barrier, he’s running head-long into it and falling on his arse in a daze. Nothing to see here. Back away from the speculation. Seriously, don’t even _consider_ thinking about it…

 

At work Malcolm treats him no differently at all, and Jamie is forced to follow his lead. It’s not natural for him though – he’s not some stuffy, middle-class tightarse, he’s a normal (yes, fuck off), passionate man with limited internal storage for bottling things up and keeping secrets, most of which is already taken up with other people’s sordid little scandals. He barely has space for his own. He’s the sort of person who habitually informs his entire extended family and everyone he meets when he’s shagging someone – not bragging as such (okay, yes, maybe a _bit_ bragging) but because he comes from a family where these things are shared. His older brothers took him out on a pub crawl to celebrate the loss of his virginity, and his old man came along too, patting him on the back and buying him pints. When he married Gemma, the party lasted three days and the Lake District honeymoon was delayed by a week because various factions of extended family kept coming round to stay over and ask them exceptionally personal questions, mainly about the possibility (as was being stage-whispered among the _entire fucking city_ ) that she was already pregnant.

 

When Gemma left him five years on, his brothers took him out again and then bought him a prostitute, but he stood her up because he was having an emotional crisis in his mam’s kitchen and ended up spending a month in her flat alternately howling, sobbing, and declaring his love to any neighbours, friends, or second-cousins who hung around long enough, regardless of gender, attractiveness, or the existence of significant others who might come round to put him back in his place with a well-aimed half-brick.

 

It’s just the same, to Jamie, as shouting his lungs up when he’s angry. It’s just what people _do_.

 

But he can’t talk about Malcolm, about any of it, to anyone, even if the rule was not firmly in place because none of it makes any fucking _sense_.

 

The first time he met Malcolm was almost twenty years ago. Ancient history. Pre-politics, a time he hasn’t thought about in years. It’s all he _can_ think about now, in the pre-dawn hours after Malcolm’s gone. It had never made any sense and makes even less in hindsight.

 

Jamie finished school a year early, a fact not generally advertised outside his immediate family in case the neighbours got the idea he thought he was better than them by getting an education without needing it beaten into him. After that he spent a long, grey summer trying to decide would he be a journalist or would he follow his uncle into the priesthood, or – the back-up plan in case both those ideas fell through – would he help his big brother Robbie jack cars and deal coke (Robbie insisted he needed someone with a brain and Jamie was the only person he knew with anything resembling one).

 

Uncle Neil had been somewhat more persuasive than either Robbie or the careers advisor, and so off to Trinity College he went. Three years later, just before Jamie was due to sit his last exams, a nosey young reporter showed up wearing brand new Doc Martins and a cheap tailored suit beneath a heavy trench coat. He’d gone around asking rude questions, sticking his nose into rooms he had no permission to enter, frightening the younger students, and generally bothering the god-botherers as hard as he could. He took particular offence to Jamie once he spotted him. He’d followed him around asking questions like how he could possibly have faith in an institution that taught him his mother and sisters were inferior beings, and how come the church owned quite so many shiny, precious objects when it droned on so much about charity, and wouldn’t he agree that Jesus was an advocate for socialism? Jamie took it upon himself to deal with the visitor and punched him in his big stupid nose. That had made it into the article – _The Shame of Modern Catholicism_ by Mal Tucker (Jamie’s never forgotten nor dared to mention that printed abbreviation) - but since only a couple of hundred people read it, the college turned a blind eye and he sought forgiveness for such ungodly behaviour in confession.

 

A week later Malcolm came back to break into a lecture hall and draw an incredibly blasphemous cartoon on the blackboard, and also (apparently) to ask Jamie how he slept at night and if he could comment on the issue of contraceptives (with a dead-straight face). Then he caught Jamie again when he was leaving one day and simply handed him a newspaper cutting of an advert for a job opening, and every single moment of the three times they interacted Malcolm looked at Jamie with an expression of abject disgust, as though his uselessness might be infectious, as though Jamie might explode and contaminate all of Glasgow with his shabby, nicotine-stained hypocrisy, as though anyone would notice a difference if he did.

 

Jamie interviewed for the job. It was at the same local paper Malcolm was from, and so Jamie introduced himself as the priest who punched the ugly gobshite who wrote the religious trash-talk article, and they pretty much hired him on the spot. On his first day he discovered Malcolm had quit and fucked off to London. He couldn’t work out for the life of him what the point of it all had been, but he’d skipped his finals, flunked out of school, and tried a few times to find an address or phone number for Malcolm Tucker, but always came up blank, which was fine really. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to send him a letter or just a packet of anthrax (a conundrum that would re-occur many years later, after the Goolding Inquiry).

 

In the following decade he got married, wrote a hell of a lot of bollocks but also enough good stuff to get a string of better jobs, apparently failed to adequately support Gemma through five miscarriages, and spent eight months in the Bar-L, no thanks to Robbie. But he genuinely has no desire to think about those years. He just keeps going over and over his first three encounters with Malcolm. The first by chance, the second due to Malcolm’s inability to leave any fucking thing alone once he’s started picking at it, and the third… he still has no idea what was going on in Malcolm’s head when he decided to essentially give a complete stranger his own fucking job… They’ve never spoken about it, ever. One more thing on the sodding list. He had no idea Malcolm had gotten into politics, but after Gemma, after Barlinnie, after he’d kicked Robbie in the balls and told him to get straight or he’d tell their da, he’d drifted south, lured by the shiny (but ultimately flimsy) promises of summertime and New Labour.

 

And then… well, eventually, after a lot of stress and hard graft, they won the election. Easy as that, Jamie knew they would because they had Malcolm. He barely knew the man, but he had faith and you can’t question faith – that’s the whole point. There are things he does want to question and explore, such as the way his name sounds almost religious when Malcolm says it, and the fact that the only other time he fucked someone this regularly over such a long period it was as a generally agreed upon precursor to marriage, but the longer it all goes on the more secretive everything has to be, because Malcolm’s in the papers more and more, and they have to be more and more careful, and if he’s going to maintain the status quo the only thing he _can_ do is not think about it when they’re not together.

 

When they are together, though, Malcolm’s _don’t talk about fuck club_ rule is slightly more flexible. He breaks it himself one night when he drags Jamie from one end of southern England to the other and takes the opportunity to suck Jamie’s cock in a very nice 15 th century hotel in St Ives.

 

But that comes after _Have I Got News For You_.

 

Malcolm is not, contrary to the dogmatic belief instilled in many of his co-workers by mostly shouting but also some evidence, actually omnipotent. He sometimes misses a beat. It’s rare but it does happen, and when it happens the media love it. It’s basically like crack to them; even the smallest of missteps on Malcolm’s part can make front-page news, because they are so rare and so very delicious to the journalists Malcolm delights in manipulating and tormenting. When he’s doing his job flawlessly the general public is barely aware that Malcolm Tucker exists; when he misses a step they’re all over him.

 

Jamie, whose job is essentially to do Malcolm’s dirty work and to cover his back, must admit privately to himself that he actually enjoys one aspect of those moments as well. He enjoys Malcolm’s slip-ups because he likes seeing Malcolm on the telly, likes to listen to other people’s awe of him – which always shines through even the silliest of fuck-ups.

 

And this little fuck-up is pretty silly.

 

Malcolm, Jamie, and Sam are sitting in Malcolm’s office after an unrelated liquid-shit of a day. They’re all three exhausted, though Malcolm’s pretending that he’s just speechless with world-weary anger and indignation. Jamie knows when he’s tired, though, he’s learned over the years to tell the signs and also to very studiously ignore and never mention them, ever, if he values the status quo of his lungs remaining inside his ribcage. Sam brought them Indian take-away, both men told her to fucking eat something since she fetched it, and for the last quarter of an hour they’ve just been chewing in companionable silence.

 

Eventually, Sam says, “We should put it on.”

 

Jamie nods. “Better to know than tae find out.”

 

Malcolm says nothing at all, just sniffs a forkful of beef vindaloo before sticking it in his mouth. Jamie picks up the remote and switches on Malcolm’s office TV. It’s already tuned to BBC One.

 

The _Have I Got News For You_ opening credits are already playing, the cartoony background, the music, zooming in over the audience and the panel, and focusing on the host – Alexander Armstrong in a suit which looks half a size too big around the shoulders.

 

Malcolm is the star of Round Two, despite some very heavy (and far from empty) threats to certain BBC executives – and not only threats, since a few have already been carried out and apparently ignored, which Jamie considers to be a whole bag of cockroach eggs gone to waste. The temptation of laughing at Malcolm Tucker is just too strong for these filthy fucking gobshites to resist.

 

Armstrong asks the panellists, “Who spent the weekend looking a bit daft in the countryside?”

 

Iain Hislop answers with, “Erm, everyone in the countryside?” The audience titters. Sam, who grew up on a farm in Wiltshire, rolls her eyes.

 

“It’s a political figure,” Armstrong prompts.

 

Hislop knows, of course. “This is Tucker, isn’t it? At the Kent County Fair on Saturday. He didn’t seem to know what was going on, I think maybe he was startled by all the fresh air and sunshine.”

 

Paul Merton adds, “Well, he’s from Scotland, he’s never seen vegetables before. The Loch Ness monster, oh that’s real, but they aren’t too sure about parsnips up there. North of Carlisle you can be sectioned under the Mental Health Act for believing in broccoli.”

 

The screen changes to the video which shows Malcolm darting between stalls and livestock, a horrible grimace on his face, trying (and failing) to make it look as though he hasn’t misplaced the Minister for Agriculture and isn’t teetering on the precipice of a massive, panic-induced coronary event. All Jamie can do is thank his whimsically benevolent God that no one besides Malcolm ever discovered said minister was actually hiding behind a sheep shed the whole time, hideously and disgracefully hung-over and vomiting up his breakfast into a wheelie bin. The fallout, however, has been this mysterious video of Malcolm running around looking a bit of a tit, scattering chickens in his wake. It’s opened up a fair bit of speculation, but Malcolm has apparently (and uncharacteristically) deigned to take this one for the team. He’s declined to make a comment, but honestly, no one can accuse him of “looking quite flustered in public” and expect it to lead to any kind of revelation. For all anyone knows, he dropped his wallet somewhere on the ground and was trying to find it before it something rural took a dump on it.

 

It’s not really news but it _is_ just the right calibre of nonsense for a panel show.

 

“He’s basically,” Alexander Armstrong is saying, “a sort of anaemic velociraptor in Armani, isn’t he?”

 

“That’s why all those chickens are following him around,” agrees Paul Merton (Jamie likes Paul Merton rather a lot but keeps that to himself). “He’s their Jurassic ancestor risen from the dead. All modern-day bird life on Earth worships him as a primeval god. Hawks get together in congregations to sacrifice a vole to him on Sundays and he dines on their souls – the voles’ souls, I mean, the souls of voles…”

 

“So you’re saying he’s a rodent vampire?” asks Hislop, looking amused.

 

From there the banter breaks down into an argument about whether or not vampires eat souls, but it eventually comes back around to the point. Jamie has become aware that Malcolm stabs at some piece of food or other every time Hislop opens his mouth, but he isn’t eating anything anymore.

 

“Does anyone know what Tucker was up to?” asks Armstrong.

 

“No,” says Merton.

 

“It’s all very mysterious,” adds Hislop, “but it’s also oddly hush-hush, I mean _maybe_ he just had one too many Red Bulls for breakfast but honestly I think we all know he’s covering something up.”

 

Malcolm says, very quietly, “I’ve sued him once, I can sue him again.”

 

“Some sort of farmyard scandal?” Merton muses. “A donkey mated with a sad duck and produced Hugh Abbott?”

 

Sam can’t stifle a giggle at that, she’s always said Hugh looked a lot like a worn-out seaside donkey at the end of the summer holidays. Malcolm snatches the remote and switches the TV off. Both Sam and Jamie watch him carefully.

 

“That wisnae so bad,” Jamie ventures.

 

Sam starts gathering up the empty food packaging. “I’ll put the word round that if anyone calls you a vampire, Jamie will stake them through the heart.”

 

“I will too, I’ll stake ‘em if they so much as _think_ it,” says Jamie, radiating mad-dog loyalty.

 

Malcolm catches Sam’s hand as she reaches for his plate, then takes the rubbish off her and puts it all in a pile. “Away home with you,” he says. “Take an extra day off for this, eh?”

 

As Sam gets her coat and bag, Jamie marvels yet again at how Malcolm is actually a decent human being towards her. She pats him affectionately on the shoulder on her way out, and he squeezes her hand. Jamie likes Sam because she isn’t intimidated by the shouting or the swearing, or the shouted swearwords – or rather, he likes what her ability to cheerfully work with Malcolm says about her, that she’s the sort of person who looks beneath the surface and sees all aspects, the bad, the good, the weird, sees the best parts of everyone, and can still be kind whatever else she finds. And that he, Jamie, isn’t fucking delusional and whatever non-specific thing he apparently sees in Malcolm, someone else fucking sees it too.

 

The next day is a little better, partially because for a whole twenty-four hours nobody in Westminster fucks anything up to a nationally significant degree, but also because three separate people appear to have missed the memo and are overheard commenting on Malcolm’s alleged vampiric attributes, which means Jamie gets to verbally eviscerate them. He’s just finished putting the Minister for Northern Ireland back in her place ( _Ahm gonnae bury ye so fuckin deep in the fucking bedrock tha’ when they eventually dig ye up they’ll have to re-write the history of life on earth cause ye look like an enormous fossilised elephant cunt – if yeh don’t watch yer fucking mouth in future yeh wrinkly auld bint_ ) when Malcolm calls to tell him they’re all going to Cornwall at the end of the month. There’s something uptight in his voice, but there often is these days, and Jamie doesn’t give it another thought.

 

It’s a compulsory team-building event conjured up by the sick minds in Human Resources, which would basically make Jamie want to kill everybody in the building before turning the gun on himself, except that when they check into the hotel next to the conference centre Malcolm steals and pockets Jamie’s second room key before fucking off into the crowd, complaining at the top of his lungs about having to be there and what a colossal fucking waste of his priceless time this all is. The prospect of sex having assuaged Jamie’s urge to kill, he attempts to behave himself for the entire day, limiting himself to only insulting people he’s not yet got around to insulting already this week.

 

It’s not often Jamie gets the privilege of coming in Malcolm’s mouth, which is actually fine because when it does happen it’s often both a good thing and a very bad thing. Good because – hey, it’s a fucking _blow job_ , and bad because it generally means he’s not going to let Jamie touch him very much. Malcolm is like that sometimes, cagey and stand-offish even though they are very much doing this on _his_ terms and there’s no way Jamie’d ever get his cock past Malcolm’s lips if he wasn’t one hundred per cent into it. Jamie stands and Malcolm sits, and when Jamie tries to help finish Malcolm off afterwards he gets slapped away and has to watch Malcolm retreat into the bathroom to wank into the loo because when he’s like this he’s particularly fussy about _mess_. He’ll also be brushing his teeth, eliminating any lingering taste of Jamie. And when he comes back, Jamie finds out why he’s in such a prickly fucking mood.

 

Jamie’s lying on the bed, lazily wanking again because it makes him feel better, in these situations, to rub in the fact that his sex drive is about eight thousand times higher than Malcolm’s and that he can get a stiffy in half the time. He’s found the porn channel and paid for a full two days with Malcolm’s credit card, so he feels like they’re on equal terms again until Malcolm stands at the foot of the bed, blocking his view, and says, “Are you going to be a problem if I start seeing someone publicly?”

 

Jamie’s renewed hard-on is suddenly a thing of the past. He puts his hands behind his head, leaves his cock hanging out, and glares at Malcolm for a full thirty seconds.

 

“What,” he says, “the fuck are you on about?”

 

“I was on fucking _Have I Got News For You_. People know who I am, and they’re gonnae start asking fuck-awful questions about me, you know, what sort of fucking biscuits do I eat, why didn’t I go tae university – am I _too good_ for the British education system? (I am, by the way) – and, oh, the favourite question of the celebrity-obsessed public, what the fuck have I been doing in the last five years because no one seems to know if I’ve got a fucking, y’know, _girl_ friend, but they’ll all be willing to state that I spend a fuck-load of time with some hairy-arsed dwarf from Motherwell with a terrible suit and a worse haircut.”

 

Jamie doesn’t know where to start, so he begins with, “what’s wrong with my fucking suit?”

 

“The point is-”

 

“The fucking _point_ is, tell them to mind their own fucking business or you’ll introduce their writing hand to the nearest Costa Coffee panini grill. And if for some reason some clueless cunt hack finds out just how enthusiastically you suck my cock when you aren’t pre-occupied wondering what they fucking _think_ about you – guess what, no one fucking cares. It’s the twenty-first century, Malc, you can be a cocksucker if you fucking want. Might as well tell ‘em what else you like, eh? How about we tell the _Express_ all about that tragic wee noise you make when I’m pounding on your fucking prostate – cause what’re they gonnae do, throw you in prison? Exile you tae Paris?”

 

Malcolm does a double-take, eyes narrowed, hands on hips. “Was that an _Oscar Wilde_ reference?”

 

“See? Ye dinnae need that university education after all.”

 

That was very much the wrong thing to say and Jamie regrets it instantly because Malcolm’s picked up his coat, and though he has the second key to Jamie’s room, Jamie doesn’t have a key to his. He sits up, pops his dick back into his boxers, and forces out an apology.

 

“Malc, hey Malc – sit the fuck down. I’m sorry, alright? Sit down and tell me what the fuck’s going on, okay?”

 

Malcolm drops his jacket over the back of a chair, which he then sits on, even though it’s a king-size bed and Jamie basically doesn’t take up any of it.

 

“Is this one of your fucking hypotheticals?” Jamie asks, knowing full well it isn’t.

 

“I just need tae know if you’re going to have some kind of jealous meltdown, is all. I mean, what the fuck is this, actually?”

 

“Well, for a start, it was your idea.”

 

“I’m not going to become Britain’s token fucking _gay_ politician, because I’m fucking _not_ , and even if you found some way to grow tits and a twat overnight you still fucking work for me. So-“

 

“Woah, woah. Do you know what I just heard? I just heard you say you’re making a fucking _exception_ for me.”

 

“Oh fucking _fuck off!”_ Malcolm’s voice bounces off the thin walls, and he bites his tongue, lowers his voice just enough. “You’re not an exception to anything except the rule stating fucking _troglodytes_ can’t be press officers. I’m not talking about what’s actually happening, I’m talking about the _truth_. Okay? The truth is, we’re heterosexual men, the both of us, the truth is we’ve never so much as glanced sidelong at each other in the gents, that’s the gospel fucking truth and it’s running a little fucking thin these days.”

 

“The truth?” Jamie echoes, suddenly angry. “What is this, then, you fucking tell me?”

 

Malcolm shrugs, spreads empty hands out in front of him. “I don’t know.”

 

Jamie doesn’t know either. They stare at each other, both stunned into silence by the fact that they’re actually talking about the Thing, that the challenge to define it is out there in the air between them. Neither of them is quite able to rise to it. Jamie tries his diplomatic best to smooth things over.

 

“You want my cards on the proverbial fucking table, Malc? I actually _like_ shagging you. That’s my investment in… this. But I can understand if you have issues getting your head around that, you skinny auld scrote sack.”

 

Malcolm gets back up off the chair, picks up his coat again, moves towards the door. “This is what we do every day – we take what’s happening and we look after that, and what we tell people is the actual truth. That’s what we fucking do, you and me, isn’t it? Tell me you can cope with applying that to… whatever the fuck this is right here.”

 

Jamie shrugs helplessly.

 

“Now, are you gonnae be a fucking problem?”

 

“Fuck off.” Jamie hurls the TV remote at Malcolm, follows it up with a pillow, then one of his shoes. Malcolm has zero issues with this suggestion and fucks off promptly, slamming the door behind him.

 

They barely speak to each other for the rest of the trip. Jamie holes up in the bar and Malcolm goes back to London a day early without telling him. They’re barely on speaking terms at all for a couple of weeks, but eventually Jamie sends Malcolm an email that simply says _Do whatever the fuck you want, I’m nobody’s fucking PROBLEM. Cunt_. Malcolm responds with a time and a place, which Jamie memorises before deleting the email.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 4 became so bloated and hideous I had to cut it into bits.
> 
> This is the first bit, in which Malcolm attempts to quietly break the rules, Jamie both fails to notice the significance and over-reacts at the same time, and we begin to meet Jamie's family.

Jamie makes an extra effort to leer at random women from then on, as his token effort towards Operation No-Homo, but he’s still angry, and it makes him even angrier the first time his “interest” is reciprocated because when that happens he has to follow through and actually shag the lass. That’s the fun bit. The less than fun bit is when he waltzes into the office, announces he spent the night with the kinky Costa barista with the pink hair, and Malcolm completely fails to react in any discernable way. His jealousy is apparently a one-way thing, which transcends him from angry to blisteringly furious. The urge to throw things at people just intensifies, though he doesn’t really get an opportunity again until Malcolm drops into office conversation the fact that he’s taking some BBC bitch whose name Jamie doesn’t deign to register out for dinner. Frankie wolf-whistles across the office, and Jamie lobs a six-inch thick wad of post-it notes at his head.

 

“Show some fucking respect,” he snarls.

 

Malcolm doesn’t even glance at Jamie, and on Friday night he fails to show up at the hotel at the designated time, something which has only happened half-a-dozen times and always due to issues of national crisis (and once when Malcolm spent four days in hospital, which did also count as a national crisis on several levels). Jamie lies on the bed and eats all the Mini Cheddars and drinks everything in the tiny fridge, sleeps fitfully, and then spends the weekend going from pub to pub picking fights with the nastiest bastards he can find. It doesn’t much help. When he gets back on Monday the office is rife with gossip, though people are beginning to learn from experience and clam up the moment they realise Jamie is listening. He hears more than enough. Sam, bless her heart, actually grabs Jamie by the arm and asks if he’s heard the “good news”. He’s never seen anyone look so happy for Malcolm before, but Sam’s bursting with enthusiasm as she tells Jamie everything she’s heard about Malcolm’s weekend away with his awful, Prada-draped tart. Anyone else would’ve found themselves face-down in the Thames for accosting him with such disgustingly sappy shite, but all he feels is a strange sadness that Malcolm hasn’t entrusted even his beloved PA with _The Thing_ between them.

 

Jamie finds himself at work functions or dinner tables or press conferences with _her_ irritatingly often. She seems to find Jamie endearing and amusing, an opinion which marks her down as completely fucking clueless and allows Jamie to relax somewhat. No one who finds him endearing can possibly have the brains to figure out about his Thing with Malcolm. Over time, though, he’s dismayed to find that she’s not stupid at all – in fact she’s blindingly smart, witty, charming, and when they’re seated next to each other at a charity dinner she keeps leaning over and making snarky little comments in Jamie’s ear about each person who stands up to make a speech, leaving him spluttering into his champagne and trying not to either laugh out loud or ram the glass right into her fucking face. That’s when he makes two important steps of progress – firstly, he begins to use her name out of a kind of grudging respect, and secondly he makes the conclusive decision that he absolutely, categorically, fucking _hates_ her.

 

She’s everywhere – in Malcolm’s house most weekends, in their office several times a week for a working lunch, in the newspapers hanging onto his arm and making him look a hundred times better just by standing near him. Jamie suspects that when _he_ stands near Malcolm he makes him look slightly more like a dark lord of the Sith, if anything. _She_ – Kelly – makes him look like a civilised fucking _gentleman_. It’s more obscene to Jamie than if he’d walked in on her sucking his cock – something _he_ hasn’t done in what seems like forever.

 

Eventually there’s another note for him in the post, with a time and a place. Jamie memorises it, shreds it, and spends the two days until the specified time trying to convince himself not to go. Jamie knows how these things work – she’s no younger than Malcolm, they’ll be wanting to seal the deal with a ring and a love-nest any fucking week now – and this is probably going to be a sort of thanks-but-fuck-off-now shag, if indeed there’ll be any shagging whatsoever. It’s been endless months since Cornwall, longer than ever before. It’d be easier all round if he just didn’t go, that would tell Malcolm _message received_ , and Jamie can go back to the good old days of fantasising about nipple-licking on his commute in peace.

 

But he does go, of course he does, and finds Malcolm on the 9th floor of a painfully generic tower-block hotel near Leicester Square. Malcolm is pacing a rut in the nasty, thin carpet, and he looks up at Jamie with something frantic in his eyes. Jamie wonders for a moment if he’s finally snapped and killed someone, if he needs Jamie to help hide the body (he knows of several pretty good ways), but it’s nothing so easy to deal with.

 

“Oi, you’re late, you tragic little timewaster.”

 

Jamie gestures out of the window, at London in general. “It’s fucking rush-hour isn’t it?” he tries to say, but he doesn’t get out more than _It’s fu-_ before Malcolm grabs hold of him and kisses him.

 

It’s even more frantic and needy than the first time, even more graceless and messy. Malcolm’s already groping between Jamie’s legs, tugging at his shirt, trying to get at him as fast as possible. There’s a small, rebellious part of Jamie that wants to push him away and tell him to go and fuck himself – or _her_ – instead, but it’s such a tiny, weak, runt of a part that he puts it out of its misery with a swift kick to the head.

 

The faint little noise Malcolm makes when Jamie bites him on the jaw tells him everything, but Malcolm spells it out anyway with a rough, low-pitched _fuck me, for fuck’s sake_ growled into Jamie’s hair. They drag each other down onto the bed where clothes are torn out of the way, and there's one of those token scuffles for dominance that Malcolm has no intention of winning despite putting in a decent, albeit brief, performance involving his elbow and Jamie's ribcage. Jamie wrestles free, shoves him face-down, grabs onto his hips, and makes sure that Malcolm won’t be able to sit down without thinking about him for at least two days.

 

Afterwards, his arm around Malcolm’s waist and his face against the back of his neck, Jamie asks, “Can the skinny cow make you feel like that, eh?”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“No, fuck you, you bastard.”

 

Malcolm’s silence suggests he accepts that. Neither of them moves, but Jamie snuggles in closer, splays a possessive hand across Malcolm’s chest, and tucks his face into the narrow curve of a shoulder. His breathing is a little ragged. After a moment, Malcolm reaches behind and strokes his fingers over Jamie’s hip, a rare tender gesture that leaves Jamie struggling for air.

 

“Tell me she’s just a fucking beard. Tell me you don't fucking _love_ her.”

 

Malcolm doesn’t tell him that, in fact he doesn’t say anything else on the subject, but he does turn and kiss Jamie, which is totally fucking new. In the years they’ve been doing this, the phrase ‘post-coital’ can be applied to cigarettes, food, TV, and arguing, but never kissing. It’s fine though, it’s totally fucking _fine_ , Jamie can deal with this little admission of _something_ , and he deals with it manfully by whimpering and kissing back, by going totally pliant when Malcolm rolls him over and presses him down into the mattress. With Malcolm’s hand beneath his neck, thumb gently brushing his throat, Jamie can do little more than hold onto him and _melt_.

 

As far as apologies go – and especially as it’s coming from someone who flunked Genuine Remorse 101 – it’s pretty fucking satisfactory. Malcolm allows Jamie approximately four and a half minutes of penitent sentimentality before bundling him out of bed, out the door, and commanding that he return with food rich in the holy trinity of food groups; salt, carbs, and MSG. When he comes back with curry and poppadums and beer, Malcolm’s flicking between news channels. Jamie settles onto the bed, stuffs food into his face as quickly as he can (a habit rooted in having six older brothers, and one which earns him side-long glances of disgust from Malcolm), and occasionally makes an unsuccessful snatch for the TV remote. His attempts at giving Malcolm an apology-accepted blowjob are brushed off ( _“fine, whatever, you frigid auld queen” – “settle the fuck down before I donate you to the Royal Society as a living specimen of homo floresiensis”_ ), but there’s no objection when Jamie rests his head on Malcolm’s chest and begins, almost immediately, to snore.

 

It’s something resembling their unconventional definition of normal, and Jamie feels better than he has in weeks. It’s a comforting feeling, getting the routine back, even if it _is_ a pretty fucked-up routine to begin with, and Jamie’s buoyed by the knowledge that what he’s seen tonight – Malcolm needy and begging – is something _she_ doesn’t ever get to see. The sense of restored normality lasts right through the night, Jamie sleeping easily in his usual position, spreadeagled and half on-top of Malcolm, his face muffled in the pillow; but it evaporates quickly when Jamie wakes up shortly before five-thirty a.m. to find Malcolm still there in the bed beside him.

 

This has not happened before, not even once, not since the first election win. Malcolm always fucks off and leaves him. Always. Falling asleep together, that’s fine – there’s always the chance of another shag under the covers, after all – but they do _not_ wake up together. It’s one of their unspoken Rules, it’s altogether far too fucking _domestic_ , and Jamie’s got no idea why Malcolm would let it happen.

 

Maybe (says the one tiny, sane voice in Jamie’s head) he’s overslept. Except Malcolm does not over-sleep. He wakes up four or five times every night, restless, like he believes sleeping is a waste of his time, and he always leaves. Jamie’s caught him slipping out after midnight, but never later than three in the morning. Without fail, he is gone when Jamie wakes up.

 

Jamie stumbles out of bed, backs away a few steps, and scowls at the sight. Malcolm’s still asleep – which is remarkable in itself – with the sheets pulled up around him and an oddly peaceful expression on his face. He backs away even more, then does the only thing he can think of and locks himself in the bathroom. He turns on the shower, slams the toilet seat up, slams it down again, knocks things off shelves, and generally makes as much noise as possible while showering to wake Malcolm and give him the opportunity to disappear. But when he emerges from the bathroom Malcolm hasn’t moved.

 

The tiny, lone, sensible voice in his head says _he could be dead_ , which only sounds sensible in comparison to all the other mad wasps pinging off the inside of Jamie’s skull screeching bollocks about how this is a good thing, isn’t it? Doesn’t he _want_ this? Doesn’t he?

 

Jamie stares for a moment. Malcolm’s not dead, his narrow ribcage rising and falling softly beneath the sheets. When he moves – the first pre-waking pillow nuzzle – Jamie starts like a dear that’s sensed the hunter, snatches up his clothes and dresses as quietly as he can, other than the steady string of curses uttered under his breath. There’s nothing that can send him from naught to angry faster than not knowing what the fuck is going on, and right now he doesn’t know _what the actual fucking fuck_ is going on. Jamie is the pit bull of Westminster, he can chew up and spit out difficult politicians like a normal person chomping through a packet of Wrigley’s, he’s harassed every newspaper editor in town so thoroughly they all now wet themselves at the sound of a Motherwell accent – even the Prime Minister is known to cringe at the mention of Jamie’s name. He’s not a man used to being out of his depth, but he’s completely flummoxed at what to do having woken up and found himself in bed with the man he’s been fucking for the last seven years. This isn’t part of the game, it’s not how it works, they have _rules_ – not the sort of flimsy, half-arsed, take-em-or-leave-em rules Jamie cheerfully breaks every day (speed limits, restraining orders, etc.), but _their_ rules, their own sodding rules that Malcolm sodding well _invented_ and _implemented_ and Jamie’s been living by for longer than his marriage lasted. It was meant to be simple; they fuck, they unwind, Jamie wakes up alone, they go around pretending they’ve never even seen each other shirtless until the next time.

 

Boundaries are being transgressed right here, and it doesn’t _matter_ if he wants to wake up next to Malcolm every morning for the rest of his life (oh fuck he doesn’t, does he? Oh fuck -) that’s not the point – the point is that this is _against their rules._

 

He grabs shoes and coat and tie and does the frantic little dance of trying to put them all on at once, then stops and stares again at the shape in the bed. He obviously has no idea whether Malcolm is one of those people who takes half an hour to gradually drag himself from sleep to reality or if he can just switch consciousness on like a lightbulb, but he suspects the latter. What happens then? Breakfast? Small talk? Morning sex? An almighty row about what the fuck Jamie thinks he’s doing standing there gawping at him, is his brain so retarded it’s only just realised it’s retarded and started acting it after forty years?

 

He tells himself it’s the thought of a pre-coffee bollocking that sends him fleeing from the room. That, as Malcolm would say, is the line and he is sticking to it.

 

Jamie pulls his coat collar up around his ears, shoves his hands in his pockets, and scurries through the drizzle for the nearest tube station. He’s shivering, the cold coming up from his bones as well as in from the outside, but he puts a good couple of streets between himself and the hotel before he stops in the shelter of a Tesco Metro doorway to light the fag he so desperately needs. His hands tremble and he drops the lighter, and only when he stoops, swearing, to find it, does he notice he’s dropped it on a human body. He swears a bit more quietly as he gets the thing lit, takes a couple of ragged, desperate puffs, then slumps against the other side of the doorway.

 

“Spare one of them?”

 

“Huh?”

 

He stares at the tramp, who he’s apparently woken. Scruffy kid, 19 or 20. He gestures at Jamie’s shaking hand. Jamie says _oh_ and offers him the packet.

 

“Rough night?” the kid asks, with a wicked grin.

 

“Oh, y’know,” Jamie shrugs, takes another deep drag, coughs a bit. “Just running the fuck away like a massive jessie.”

 

The kid’s eyes widen. “Trouble?”

 

“Naw.” Jamie reassures him with outspread palms. “Nothing like that.”

 

“Walk of shame, eh?”

 

Jamie shrugs again.

 

The tramp says “Fahkin idiot,” tucks the cigarette up his sleeve, pulls his ratty sleeping bag up to his neck, and goes back to sleep. Beyond the doorway, the drizzle strengthens into a determined rain, the sort that’s settled in place for the rest of the morning. Jamie wonders if he should go back to the hotel. Bring some breakfast with him. If Malcolm’s gone, fine, and if not…

 

He finishes the cigarette, flicks the butt into the gutter, and steps out into the downpour. He could go back. He hasn’t come far. But even if his heart and his head are both hesitating, his feet are a fuckload more decisive, and they’re taking him home, splashing through puddles and kicking at yesterday’s abandoned newspapers in the gutters.

 

By the time he gets to work, Malcolm is already there. Jamie avoids him, but it doesn’t do much good because as soon as they encounter each other in the press office Malcolm grabs him – literally – by the collar and hauls him past Sam and into his own office. It’s remarkable – he’s clean shaven, wearing a fresh suit and a new tie, while Jamie’s barely had time to take a dump before arriving 10 minutes late and making up some lie about leaves on the line.

 

He breaks Malcolm’s grip on him and puts the desk between them, hands up in front of him.

 

“Look – “ he begins.

 

“No, you fucking look.” Malcolm brandishes a copy of the morning’s _Herald_. There’s a face not unlike Jamie’s, only leaner and dark-eyed, splashed across the front page. He grins in recognition.

 

“Oh hey! That’s oor Robbie, that is.”

 

“Your delinquent brother? Again?”

 

“Aye, what’s he done this time?”

 

Jamie snatches the paper, but glances at Malcolm’s stony face where he can read, chiselled in several helpful languages, that whatever Robbie’s done, he’s in trouble for it too – as fucking usual, and not only where Malcolm’s concerned.

 

“Armed robbery,” Malcolm says. “He’ll get six years, easy.”

 

“Ach, he’s done longer, he’ll be alright.”

 

“Oi, spadge-for-brains. I’m talking about how bad this looks for my department, here.”

 

“We’re not the same fucking person though, are we? I mean, he’s my brother not my fucking clone. And I’ve got a half-brother who’s a cop, so it all evens out, eh?”

 

“No! It fucking doesn’t. Did none of the other hideous bridge-trolls that raised you think to tell you about this? Or is _your Robbie_ getting sent up for robbery such an every-day occurrence they figured they’d wait to find out how your wee cousins did in their fucking exams so they can tell you in one phone call? You’re gonnae have to do some-“ Malcolm’s interrupted mid-flow by his phone ringing. He glares at it for a long and painful moment, then dismisses the call. “I was _saying_ you’re gonnae have to chat up a reporter or two, make up some sob-story, difficult childhood, blah –blah, say yer dad used tae hit him or something.”

 

“Da did used to hit us. And our mam did too, round the back of the legs with a wooden spoon.”

 

“Right, no need to lie, then, makes it easier. Angela Heaney, go have a chat with her, get your hopeless twat of a litter-mate some sympathetic media coverage, right? This government wants to _help_ repeat offenders, that’s why you joined the party, et-fucking-cetera, put some vapo-rub under your eyes so you look like you’ve been wangsting over it all night-“

 

“As opposed to what I was actually doing all night?”

 

It’s a little act of defiance at being made to talk to the press about Robbie, and he fully expects Malcolm to kick him out of the office with a string of obscenities and insults, but it doesn’t happen. Malcolm stares at him with an odd sort of quizzical half-frown, and Jamie just stares straight back, waiting him out. Finally, Malcolm backs off a step and sits down on the edge of his desk, rubs a hand across his face, then says, “Jamie-“

 

There’s a knock at the door, and Sam sticks her head around it.

 

“Call for you, Malcolm, it’s Kelly, she says your mobile isn’t working.”

 

“No personal calls today Sam, okay?”

 

“But she-“

 

“No fucking personal calls, can you manage that?”

 

Sam glances at Jamie, who shrugs helplessly, then she vanishes again.

 

“You were gonnae say…?”

 

“Nothing, fuck-all. Get out. Go and drag your family’s name out of the pig shit if at all possible, make me look a tiny bit less like a colossal moron for keeping you around. Go on, fuck off.”

 

Jamie hesitates in the doorway for a moment, then closes it behind him. He pulls out his mobile and sends a quick text to his oldest brother, Iain: _Could’ve told me. Twat._ Then he calls his mum as he’s heading back towards the press office and leaves her a reassuring message that not all of her sons are massive cunts, for example he himself is only a bit of a cunt, Iain’s okay, and Gil’s a good boy, so don’t get too upset, eh?

 

He’s about to call that pony-fondling bint from the _Standard_ when his phone rings. The display says _Iain_ , which is worrying. His family never call him at work.

 

“It’s Kate,” Iain tells him. “She’s gone psycho on Terry over the Rob thing. We’re staging an intervention, can you get out of work?”

 

Jamie glances back at the closed door of Malcolm’s office. “Can’t ye intervene without me?”

 

“I suppose, but she always liked ye so she might listen tae ye. Fuck knows she willnae listen tae me anymore, no after last Christmas…”  

 

Jamie’s never taken a sick day since he started working for Malcolm, and he hasn’t had a holiday in years – because Malcolm never takes one, and he needs Jamie here. It’d be short notice, but…

 

“I can try.”

 

“There’s a flight at three-fifteen, I already looked. Eighty quid from Gatwick.”

 

“Fuck. Okay. I’ll call you back.”

 

Jamie hangs up, and his phone buzzes again so he calls it an irritating plastic twunt and ignores whoever is sending him text messages instead of just calling, crashing into the comms room like a small but deadly whirlwind.

 

“Frankie, Jenny! The fuck are you useless cunts doing?”

 

They both start, looking exceptionally guilty even though Jamie can see they’re just going through Graeme’s personal emails while he’s off somewhere, probably the twice-daily twenty-minute appointment between his buttocks and chilly porcelain.

 

“I need you tae cover for me. I’ll clear it with Malc, but I’ll be away a couple of days. Back by Thursday. Just make sure you string up that grabby-handy fucking sleezebag from Health, yeah? He gives you any trouble, tell him I’m away tae pick-up my special senior-advisor-stabbing katana from the sword-sharpening shop. If the Minister himself tries to get involved, drop some hints that if he cannae handle his staff, he cannae fucking handle the nation’s _health_ , and maybe he ought to try a different career path – Chief Mouser’s still vacant, that might be more his level anyway. And see if you can find out who’s being lined up for this Social Affairs gig, mebby Carver or Lawton, and try and find out what the actual fuck it is, we still don’t fucking know – sounds a bit pervy, if ye ask me, _social affairs_ , I’ve had a few social affairs I dinnae want the government to know about… and don’t call me unless it’s an emergency, okay? And the only emergency is if Malc either dies or kills someone. If there’s no blood I don’t want to know.”

 

Frankie’s dumb enough to ask “Are you going on holiday?” and gets another block of post-its lobbed at him.

 

“Family emergency.” Jamie lets that sink in as his de-facto underlings attempt to imagine Jamie’s family and what might constitute an emergency for such creatures of the swamp.

 

The next thing Jamie does is book his flight, phone tucked between ear and shoulder, credit card in hand. Then, exercising his right as the only person on the planet who can do so and get away with it, he bursts into Malcolm’s office un-announced and without knocking. Sam’s there, balancing a pile of ring binders while trying to persuade Malcolm to sign something he clearly has zero interest in, and which she hands to Jamie instead.

 

“Can you forge his signature on this?”

 

“No, he can’t. Out.” Malcolm flaps at Sam until she leaves with a frustrated eye-roll.

 

As soon as the door closes they both begin to speak at once, but Jamie can actually out-volume Malcolm (he can do naught to eighty decibels in less than quarter of a second) and gets in there first.

 

“I’m going away, just a few days, mebbe a week, I want to see if I can help with this Robbie thing, and I’m fucking _entitled_ , okay?”

 

Malcolm gives him a narrow-eyed look and says nothing.

 

“I’m fucking going. Deal with it, or I’ll take it up with those androids in human resources.”

 

“Fine,” Malcolm barks, though it doesn’t sound very fine at all. “Fuck off then.”

 

Off Jamie fucks. At his flat he has a moment of agonising class dissonance half-way through packing the flash little Samsonite carry-on case he takes when he travels for work so that Malcolm will deign to be seen in the same train station as him. The thing is basically an invitation to muggers, but the reason he hesitates is that it cost more than his mother has in disposable income in six months. He tips it out onto the bed and instead crams his socks, t-shirts, iPod and the Andy McNab paperback he’s reading into a battered old rucksack. Off comes shirt and tie, and on goes his old grey hoodie. He hates flying with a vengeance, so he fishes an ancient packet of Valium out of the bathroom cabinet and adds that to the bag, then, feeling a bit like a backpacker or a runaway teen, he heads for the tube.

 

Kate is an issue. If Iain hadn’t said the name “Kate” he probably wouldn’t be going anywhere. She’s Robbie’s girlfriend, Jamie’s sister-in-law in everything except law, been part of the family for decades now but never quite got around to a wedding what with Robbie’s chosen career and a batch of weans to raise (now fully grown and fledged). At her best she’s a charismatic socialite, while at her worst she’s a sort of hideous heroin-addled wraith, and it all sort-of depends on her mood, the brightness of Jupiter, the fluctuations of aurora borealis, and the retail price of Freddos. She can be Miss Strathclyde of the Year one minute and a screaming banshee dedicated to feeding on McDonald bone-marrow and spinal fluid the next.

 

Terry, on the other hand, is one of Jamie’s most steadfast and reliable relatives. Their da’s brother’s eldest son, basically raised with Jamie’s big brothers, Jamie could always rely on Terry to be among the mob that came to his rescue when he got into fights he couldn’t get himself out of, which was, as a young lad, relatively often. It was Terry sat him down as a pre-teen and told him wee man syndrome was all well and good but ye had to have the clout to back it up. He taught Jamie how to throw a proper punch, how to swing a kick and not have it turned against you, how to break out of a strangle-hold, how to push your keys between your knuckles to make an impromptu weapon... But you’d never think he knew all that shit, Terry – he’s lean and quiet, with his big round specs and his fluffy hair. He knew, though, same as Iain knew, as all eldest McDonald boys knew. Jamie remembers being very small and seeing Iain throw their da out into the narrow, unkempt back garden. Took him a long while to work out why he’d done that, and what it had to do with his mam trembling in the bathroom. Terry’s dad was on deployment at the time, so round he came to sit in the kitchen with Iain, between da (out in the garden, shouting and trying to get over the back wall pished as he was) and mam and the weans. Jamie must have been five or six years old, but he remembers seeing Iain and Terry sitting at the kitchen table, smoking roll-ups and drinking black coffee all night, and feeling safe.

 

Later, at school, Jamie made an enemy of Lachlan Mclean, a nasty wee psycho who brought a penknife to school and sat at the back of the class striking matches and letting them burn down to his fingers while the teacher’s back was turned, the kid who intentionally suffocated the school hamsters in a Tupperware sandwich box. One day Jamie decided to get his kicks from stealing Lachie’s penknife and carving the initials LM onto desks, walls, anything he could think of, which might have been enough to get the other kid expelled if the plan worked, which it didn’t because Lachlan caught Jamie with his fingers in his backpack at breaktime. Lachlan had mates, and Jamie was alone, and if Iain and Terry hadn’t spotted the commotion in the playground from the chip shop across the street Jamie might have wound up a basket case from the ferocity of the head-kickings he was due. They’d hauled Jamie, still kicking despite being hugely outnumbered, out of the fray and chased the gang away and then, later, they’d gone round to the Mclean house where they met Lachie’s big brother and broke three of his fingers as a warning.

 

Jamie considers himself to have one positive trait, and that’s loyalty. His brother and his cousin earned it long before he could even point to London on a map, and if they want him then he’s going. If he has to flirt Kate round to a civilised conversation, then so be it.

 

He’s early for the flight so he gets a coffee and sits in an uncomfortable airport chair and remembers that after he spoke to Iain his phone had gone off again. He checks the message. It was (and unfortunately still is) a text from Malcolm’s personal number;

 

_tonight. usual time. my house. delete this right the fuck now._

 

Jamie shouts “Fuck!” and slams his paper cup on the table, destroying it and sending scalding-hot coffee through the air, across the table, and all over his lap. He yelps, snatches a wad of paper napkins off the counter, and dabs gingerly at his thigh, thanking whomever might be listening that he stopped to change into jeans, while the teenagers manning the coffee machine make a listless effort at cleaning the table. Impulsively, Jamie snatches his phone (which is miraculously unscathed) and deletes the text message even as he’s still prying the material of his damp trousers away from his crotch.

 

He paces, watched by a mildly interested airport security officer, and glares at the phone as though it planned and staged this ridiculous little farce.

 

He calls Malcolm’s mobile, though he has no idea what he’s going to say, but it rings out, and on the second attempt it cuts off. He tries the office and gets Sam.

 

“Hey, it’s me, put him on, will you?”

 

“Jamie? Hang on a sec.”

 

Sam’s gone for an uncomfortably long time, during which Jamie paces and tries to figure out what to say. The portion of his brain responsible for his ability to form coherent sentences is rapidly shrivelling like a tumour under intense radiation, and the security guard is becoming somewhat more interested as he jigs on the spot. By the time Sam’s voice returns, he’s practically bouncing up and down.

 

“Sorry, Jamie, he’s not available.”

 

“What? Don’t be stupid, it’s _me_.”

 

“He just said no to the call.” Sam sounds helpless and bewildered, though not nearly as helpless and bewildered as Jamie feels.

 

“Tell him – tell him I only just saw his fucking message, okay?” That should be safe enough. “And I’m at the airport, tell him…” he wants to say _we’ll reschedule_ but he can’t, that’s not… so he flounders. “Just tell him that, aye? I’ll stay on the line, you go and tell him.”

 

The line goes quiet again. Jamie can imagine Sam’s tolerant little sigh at being their go-between, sticking her head around Malcolm’s door, relaying his message, and Malcolm… he doesn’t know. Glaring. The bollocking face. Malcolm doesn’t _appreciate_ miscommunication.

 

“Okay,” Sam’s voice, sounding harassed, “this is from him, okay? Not me. I’m just the messenger, it’s my _job_ … You’re to go and fuck yourself, you lying little cunt. Jamie, what did you _do_?”

 

“Nothing. Fuck…”

 

“Jamie.” There’s a horrible note of suspicion in Sam’s voice, and Jamie instantly knows where her mind’s gone. He shudders, physically, from head to foot. “You didn’t-?”

 

“No, pet – _no_. It’s not-“

 

“He’s not talking calls from either of you –“

 

“Look, this isn’t fucking _Hollyoaks_. He’s having a pissyfit because I have bigger priorities than him right now, okay? Just… just tell him to fucking call me.”

 

Sam makes a noise at that – as if she or any other living human can tell Malcolm to do anything – but says she’ll pass it on. “Safe flight,” she adds. “Bring me some of those five-quid peanuts.”

 

Then she’s gone. Jamie says “Fuck” and paces again. A desperate man would call his mobile a few more times just to make sure they are definitely Not Speaking, but Malcolm in this mood can get tae fuck.

 

A timid young man in an apron brings Jamie another coffee on the house, probably (Jamie realises) because he’s still saying “fuck” on repeat. He stops saying “fuck” and instead says “cheers, mate,” forcing out a smile which sends the lad scampering back behind the counter. He slumps back into the chair and glares at the phone again. It sits there on the table, scuffed and abused but ultimately innocent. He double-checks that he deleted the message, and yep – it’s gone.

 

Jamie has the entire flight to Glasgow to enjoy the feeling of tiny little tentacles spawning somewhere inside his ribcage and very slowly entangling and constricting and bruising his heart. Having conveniently forgotten about the Valium, he tells himself it’s just because he’s sitting in an ineptly converted bendy bus, spray-painted orange and stocked with sick-bags, clanking through the sky thirty-thousand feet above the ground, and it’s got nothing at all to do with the phrase “ _my house”_.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually the rest of chapter 4 due to part of me still tragically attempting to keep to the 5 + 1 structure of the kinkmeme prompt that somehow resulted in this thing.

The desolation is the first thing Jamie sees upon picking the lock and breaking into Terry’s house. There’s shit everywhere – CDs strewn across the floor, torn books, bits of smashed crockery, a broken radio, a piece ripped off the curtain, which hangs like a flag of defeat off its runner. They’ve been fighting for hours – or rather, Kate’s been fighting and Terry’s been cautiously trying to subdue her with the help of a house full of people.

 

The house full of people is the second thing Jamie notices. Some of them are trying to talk, quite loudly, to a woman who clearly is not listening. Some of them are raiding Terry’s fridge, the rest are smoking in the kitchen. All relatives, all quite used to Kate’s tempers (a normal person would call them _psychoses_ but by McDonald standards she’s not that far off the end of the crazy scale). They seem to be treating this as an opportunity to catch up with each other, probably having been told Jamie was on the way and content in the knowledge that Kate _likes_ Jamie. He’ll sort it all out.

 

The third thing Jamie sees could have done with featuring higher on the list, but there is a _lot_ going on. It’s an ashtray, flying through the air having just left Kate’s hand. It’s weighted glass, chipped and yellowed, probably nicked from a pub, and it glances off Jamie’s forehead, more or less exactly between his eyes. In the bright flash of light that comes before the blackout, Jamie sees Iain lunge across the room, Terry mouthing the word _shit_ , and Kate’s rage-filled eyes suddenly turn sober with the realisation she may just have killed her diminutive brother-in-law.

 

The lights go out, the curtains are drawn, and Jamie goes down sort of sideways and staggering, like a drunk with his shoelaces tied together, and crashes down onto the coffee table, which (he finds out later) fails to take his weight and shatters.

 

Jamie seldom remembers his dreams, but in this one he’s slowly sinking to the bottom of a filthy river which might be the Thames or the Clyde. All the little fish dart around him occasionally offering unhelpful advice such as “you could try swimming, mate” and “just breathe through your gills” and “oh hey, remember the time you mixed leftover curry with ice cream and ate it after chugging twelve pints? Yeah, don’t do that again”. The muddy river bed is a graveyard for Tesco trolleys, old cars, bits of wood, crisp wrappers, coke cans, and a suspicious-looking rolled-up carpet, and Jamie joins them, sinking down, down into the silt and fish shit until it covers his face and he’s still not dead, just in a constant state of being drowned, and sinking down, down into the bedrock, his lungs filling with water and sludge and dirt, past the skulls of long-extinct reptiles, some of which are vaguely familiar from Whitehall, until he’s seeing the red veins and arteries of the earth drift past in scalding slow-mo for what seems like several eternities.

 

When he opens his eyes a billion years later he’s starting at Iain’s living-room ceiling. Someone’s holding a cold flannel against his head, and someone else is sitting on his feet. That someone giggles when he moves them, and the giggle pierces his skull like a harpoon.

 

“Awfuck,” he moans, and closes his eyes again.

 

A tinny, high-pitched voice shouts “UNCLE JAMIE’S AWAKE!” And something the approximate weight of a Volvo estate lands on his chest. Jamie _oof_ s and groans until the wriggling mass is removed.

 

“Sorry, mate.” Jamie blinks up at Iain’s grinning face and calls him a git. It’s about all he can work up to at the moment, and some small concession is made for the hyperactive child slung over Iain’s shoulder. It’s Emmy, who is actually Jamie’s _great_ -niece, Iain’s granddaughter, which, despite the McDonald tradition of breeding young, and the age-gap between elder and younger brother, makes Jamie feel pretty fucking _old_ as well as bruised and battered.

 

“Ashtray,” he says, blinking away the clinging spider-web remains of the numbing dream and the bewilderment. “…Fucking… ashtray.”

 

“Wasn’t sure you’d wake up. We were just about to call an ambulance.”

 

Jamie scowls, which really fucking hurts. “No fucking ambulance. Could do with a fag though if you’ve got one.”

 

“Sorry, just quit. I’ll send the boy out to get ye some. Kate’ll be round soon, by the way, I told Terry to keep her at bay as long as possible, but time’s probably up on that.” He puts Emmy down, and she immediately starts to climb on Jamie again.  Iain tries to dislodge her but Jamie waves him off and helps boost her up to a more comfortable position between his side and the back of the couch, where she launches into a story about a caterpillar she found on a leaf this morning.

 

“It was going to nana’s and grandda’s too,” she insists, looking around hopefully in case it’s arrived yet.

 

“That’s nice, pet,” Jamie says, vaguely. His head feels a bit spinny. Iain’s retreated into the next room, but returns within a few seconds with an entourage which includes a lanky teenager, Jamie’s namesake nephew. Nearly six-foot-four at nineteen, he’s still known to the world as Wee Jamie to distinguish him from his temporarily disarmed uncle, who refuses to acknowledge any irony there whatsoever. Three other small children surge around Iain’s legs and launch themselves at various bits of Jamie. He gets an arm around Leon, who waves a couple of extremely lifelike rubber spiders at him, and a lap full of Alfie, who crawls up next to his sister. Aimee, who at seven is the pack leader, gives Jamie a dutiful kiss on the cheek, then demands to know if he’s brought presents.

 

“Don’t be rude,” Iain scolds. “Uncle Jamie has a headache.”

 

“Got a split skull,” Jamie corrects.

 

Aimee gives him a hilariously serious look then peels back the flannel. She examines Jamie’s undoubtedly bruised face in minute detail, and shakes her head.

 

“Prolly concussion,” she says, “I’ll get you some Calpol, don’t move.”

 

“Might need something a bit stronger than that,” he says, but Aimee drags a footstool into the kitchen, climbs up to the cabinet, and brings Jamie the bottle. Iain shrugs, so he’s forced to lie there and be fed a spoon of pink goop.

 

“Thanks, darlin’,” he says, though his mouth now tastes like he’s just given a rimjob to an Oompa Loompa.

 

He feels a bit bad about not thinking to bring presents, but he’s distracted right now by Leon’s leggy terrors being waved in front of his slightly blurred vision and the mounting need for a nicotine fix. He fishes for his wallet and throws it at Wee Jamie.

 

“Whatever they’ve got that’ll turn me fucking outside-in again. And a fucking Kit Kat. And as many Kinder Eggs as you can get in your pockets, and whatever you’d like yourself. Within fucking reason, eh?”

 

The teen heads for the corner shop, and Iain finally manages to corral all four children away from Jamie and onto the other couch. He puts the TV on, already tuned to Ceebeebies and the primary-coloured world of Peppa Pig. Aimee makes it known that the programme is too immature for her by switching on a thing Jamie wants to call a Game Boy, but looks little like the ones he bought for these kids’ parents in Christmases gone by. Iain fetches tea and they all sit in a companionable silence for a while, except for Peppa’s first ballet lesson, which has Emmy and Alfie jumping up and down in front of the telly, making the floorboards rattle.

 

Jamie checks his phone. It’s such an automatic action now, he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it until he’s listening to a garbled message from Frankie about old Anusol-breath at the Department of Health compounding his miserable behaviour by… something, something, Jamie doesn’t care. There’s about fifty emails, most of them from Jenny adding various details to Frankie’s earlier frantic message. He forwards a couple to Sam, who’ll alert Malcolm if she thinks Frankie’s failing to hold the fort. From the man himself… radio silence. Not so much as a voicemail bollocking to be passed onto Robbie.

 

His nephew returns a few minutes later with a couple of packets of Silk Cut ( _the hell?_ Is all Jamie can manage – the kid shrugs) which he chain smokes in the kitchen where Iain has opened a window, letting in the chill. The back door is also propped open with the expectation that Jamie step outside if the kids’ parents come home.

 

“Second-hand smoke,” says Iain with a sheepish shrug. “It’s Boyd, really.” Cara’s athletic, vegan, teetotal, GM-free, preservative-free, if-you-didn’t-pick-it-or-dig-it-up-it’s-not-food husband.

 

Jamie shoots a glare at his indifferent nephew. “I’m pretty sure fucking Silk Cut fucking _reduces_ the risk of heart disease,” he grumbles, but fair enough.

 

They stand in the little kitchen, Jamie beginning to want a drink but making do with tea from a mug printed with Scooby Doo characters, faded around the edges from twice-daily washing. The clothes drier in the corner rumbles away, the odd flash of sock or t-shirt visible through the glass door, all kids’ laundry, bright colours and cartoon prints. Iain talks amiably about stuff, normal, every-day chit-chat – his mate Mick from the football club’s broke a leg, Liza next door is thinking of selling up and moving east, we tried to get a new cooker from an advert in the paper – not _new_ new, second hand, obviously, but a better one – but the bloke wouldn’t haggle, wouldn’t play the game, and did you hear our Valerie broke off her engagement to that feller? Jamie nods along, grinning and _oh, aye?_ -ing. He remembers Liza-next-door as an extravagant, generous woman with an open-front-door policy towards her friends, and Jamie has some very good memories of some very good parties round there. Him and Gemma, Iain and Susan, Robbie and Kate, always cheap champagne and fucking babycham for some reason, and if Cam joined them he’d bring a blender, a bag of ice, and a bottle of Baileys, and someone would pass around a joint, and they’d argue about the music and bitch about work and sport and politics…

 

He slept with Liza a few times, after Gemma left. Long summer nights in her bed with the orange sheets and the gauze canopy, smoking while she gave him one of those slow, drawn-out blowjobs she was so good at. He’s wondering if he should pop round and say hi, but the doorbell interrupts his thoughts.

 

Kate is a lace-and-leather fireball as comes running through the lounge, into the kitchen, and throws her arms around his neck.

 

“Oh _Christ_ , Jamie!” she says, her voice muffled against his chest, “I’m so, so sorry! Oh god, oh god. Oh _god_ , I’m sorry! Are you okay?”

 

Jamie gives her a squeeze then pries her off his shirt. “I’m fine, you mad bitch. The fuck’s up with you, anyway?”

 

She’s in a state, her auburn hair all over the place and her eyes panda-smudged, but she’s still utterly stunning. A hot mess. Another person who hasn’t changed a bit since her twenties, despite the best efforts of several class-A compounds. Or maybe Jamie’s just looking at her through home-tinted specs.

 

“Oh god, I don’t know.” She takes his hand and leads him outside, where she sits on the low wall bordering the patio from the narrow rectangle of grass, and takes out a little silver case of pre-rolled fags.

 

“Thank fuck.” Jamie helps himself to one, and she lights it for him, touching his bruised forehead with one thin hand as he leans in.

 

“Doctor Aimee diagnosed concussion,” he says, grinning. “I’ll live to be viciously brutalised again some other day.”

 

“Oh, Jamie…” She takes a long drag, tilts her head back, exhales. “I tried to get the big bastard to go straight this time. I don’t know how he got mixed up in this shit _again_. I’m just so over it now, we’re not young things any more, we need to start being more practical but he keeps talking about the money, and the money’s _shit_ , he’s always exaggerating his cut – not just to me, but to himself, and he doesn’t get what he thinks he should get, and he gets angry and…” Her voice and her hand tremble. He takes the latter and squeezes it reassuringly. After a couple more inhales that reduce the roll-up to almost nothing, she threads her fingers into his and forces a grim smile. “I just, I _knew_ he’d do something like this and ruin everything, sooner or later.”

 

“So why take it out on Terry?”

 

“Oh.” She has the decency to look thoroughly ashamed. “I spent weeks trying to get him to talk to Rob. He said he has, frequently. Then it was Terry introduced him to this Welsh bloke who ran the botched job, and I…”

 

“Over-reacted.”

 

She shrugs. “My speciality.”

 

“Aye, that it is.”

 

“I’m gonnae have to move out, find a smaller place, try and get a better job which I don’t want to do, I _like_ the café, the girls are fun, but they can’t give me any more hours than I’m doing now, it’s only part-time…” She sniffs, shakes her head vigorously. “Fuck’s sake. You know what flipped me over the edge this morning?”

 

“What?”

 

“Realised that, if I had the chance to do my whole life over again, I’d still choose your stupid fucking _brother_. I’m such an _idiot_.”

 

She starts crying properly, then. Big, body-shaking sobs that are undoubtedly more cathartic than lobbing bits of Terry’s flat around the place. Jamie makes soothing, _there there, hen_ noises and puts his arm around her, and doesn’t object when she smudges old mascara all over his white t-shirt. He wonders, if he had his own time over again, would he try harder with Gemma? Not that he knows exactly how… couldn’t have taken any more time off work, couldn’t have held her any closer or told her any more stupid, comforting lies. Would he have still gone to London? Knowing how much work and how much frustration, and how…

 

Well. Yes. He would. No question.

 

He squeezes his stupid sister-in-law tighter and tells her she’s a daft cow and that they’ll all look after her, that if she needs help, or money, or somewhere to stay, that they’ve got her, all of them, even the concussed ones and the ones whose house looks like a herd of angry bulls has stampeded through it several times.

 

He sleeps on Iain’s couch that night, and goes with Kate the next day to put Terry’s flat back together. Then it’s round to his mam’s place to be fed endless tea and Jamaica ginger cake. Jamie’s mam is a tiny, quiet, soft-tempered woman who has somehow, over the course of her life, spawned a fearsome tribe of big, noisy, mean-tempered sons – and, of course, one smaller one (Jamie’s closer physical resemblance to his younger, less mad, half-brother is one of those things the entire family studiously fails to acknowledge), and also a daughter, Kim, who’s back in London doing the working mum thing but told Jamie via text message that she would make time to come up there and rip Kate’s tits off if he couldn’t handle the situation himself. He sends her a quick _no tit-ripping required_ text message and checks his work email again, but there’s nothing interesting coming through except for a note from Frankie that just says “everything under control!!!” which makes Jamie highly suspicious seeing as nothing has ever been fully _under control_ before, especially not three exclamation-marks’ worth. He forwards the email to Malcolm with the addition “Is it?!?!?!” and moments later gets back “Richmond terrace on fire, TB-riddled badgers rampaging in corridors of number 10 coughing in people’s faces, bandits attacking the treasury, BSE is back on the menu, Diana’s died again, someone bought really shit coffee, Sam deployed on find-and-kill order, nothing good on TV. Not coping without you xx”

 

Frankly, it’s better than he expected on a number of levels.

 

The day after that, he takes the kids to the zoo. As soon as word gets out that there’s an outing, he suddenly finds himself with an entourage of so many tiny McDonalds, all under or around ten years old, that the girl at the zoo gates hands him a teacher’s pack. He drags Iain’s eldest girl, Cara, along for that fun experience, which was probably a good move since Uncle Jamie has the reputation of an absolute pushover, as evidenced by the call from his Lloyds branch in London asking whether he’s really spent that much money on Mr Whippy in the space of twelve minutes.

 

It’s good to be home, even for a little while. He makes time to see as many people as he can, all his brothers and their families, some of his cousins, a few old friends, and he does drop in on Liza, stays the night (for old time’s sake, she says, and he grins and kisses her), and makes sure at least one or two neighbours see him vault the back fence into Iain’s garden the next morning, telling himself it’s so people will stop asking him if he’s got a girlfriend and not at all because Frankie’s from this part of town and will undoubtedly hear about it on the gossip chain within a day or two and spread it round the office like wildfire).

 

Jamie’s almost not back in London by Thursday thanks to the epic hangover that follows the Wednesday night re-union of all of his non-incarcerated brothers and the subsequent (and by the end quite literal) pub crawl. There are a few soap opera moments the next morning – Iain’s in trouble with Susan because he was supposed to have the grandkids again, and Cam disappears somewhere around 2 a.m. only to call Iain from Fort William several hours later with no memory of why he decided to get on a bus but there’s three girls here with him and he’s got _no idea_ …

 

It’s all very funny to Jamie, despite the headache, and he’s almost grateful he’s leaving the drama behind. But the drama has other ideas and follows him to London. Or, rather, it’s there waiting for him in the form of a tall, slender figure on the doorstep of his building, wrapped up in a Prada raincoat and reeking, at fifty paces, of that peculiar upper-middle-class substitute for uncertainty – one is _never_ where one doesn’t ought to be because there is nowhere one ought not to be, but one finds oneself in unknown territory that doesn’t appear to have been properly cleaned any time recently.

 

Jamie does an immediate one-eighty and decides he’ll do another lap back around the station, come back when she’s gone, but it’s already too late. He’s about as stealthy as an elephant wearing ghungroos, and she’s heard him coming, whipped round, and is waving a gloved hand at him across the street.

 

“Awfuck,” he groans, and stomps across the road to the other side, jabbing a finger at her as he approaches. “You. What the fuck are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be off kidnapping Dalmatian puppies to make into designer gimp masks?”

 

She manages a little smile – _why_ does she smile when he insults her? – and spreads her hands out apologetically.

 

“Sorry, Jamie, I thought you were back this morning... Could I come up?”

 

That’s where, (Jamie decides, several years later) it all begins to end, for all of them. The moment fucking _Kelly_ (and it’ll always be her fault) decided to adopt Jamie as her unwilling little confidante. Telling her to go and fuck herself has literally no effect due to her infuriating immunity, and the way she says _I haven’t got anyone I can really talk to, my family all lives miles away, and, well, you know him better than anyone…_ might as well be a canon ball especially custom-forged to smash through Jamie’s defences. He lets her in and makes coffee and endures her talking at him until she begins to go all puffy in the face, and he realises she’s about to cry and calls her a BBC costume drama tragedy and hands her a box of Kleenex.

 

He resents being put upon, he resents her sitting there in her thousand-quid suit looking for a coaster to protect his forty-quid coffee table, and he resents her ability to discuss her relationship with anyone at all, even if she’s gone ahead and picked _him_ of all six billion people on the planet.

 

Malcolm, she tells him, is _emotionally fucked up._ Jamie sits on an armchair with his feet on the cushions and his knees tucked up under his chin, and stares at her.

 

“Well,” he says, “yes. I see you’ve fucking _met_ him.”

 

“But not consistently,” she continues, and he grits his teeth and slumps back in the chair. “Some days we’re on so much the same wavelength, we’re so good together, and then… other days, Jamie, god… he’s barely aware I’m there. I know work comes first, I always knew that, my work’s important too, but Jesus – he’s all over the place.”

 

“He does have rabies. You know _that_ , right?”

 

She manages another little half-smile. “You bit him, did you?”

 

Jamie just nods. He’s concentrating on not throwing his steaming coffee mug at her head.

 

“He’s at home right now, and he probably hasn’t even realised I’ve gone out. He’ll be in the office with the TV and… we _do_ things together, you know, dinner, theatre, but he’s not always a hundred percent there, and I – can I tell you this? – I’m not convinced he actually enjoys sex-“

 

“Oh, Jesus fuck…”

 

“- which wouldn’t really matter if he’d _talk_ to me, you know?”

 

And on it goes, her talking in a voice like white noise and Jamie lighting two cigarettes and smoking them both at once. Eventually, three coffees and a clanging headache later, he snaps and interrupts her.

 

In some parallel universe, some alternate Jamie opens his mouth and says _I’m shagging your man – he’s_ my _man, mine, I was here first, you’re a media-friendly decoy, you daft cunt, that’s your entire fucking problem_. But alternate Jamie very quickly finds himself unemployable and standing in a dole queue, and actual, real, this-universe Jamie’s sixth sense apparently picks up on that because he bites his tongue and chooses a marginally more tactful approach.

 

(And anyway, one of the little bees in his brain reminds him, Malcolm isn’t _his_ , is he? They’ve got nothing real, have they? Nothing to show for all these years…)

 

“Look,” he says, “if you’re not happy, why not just fucking leave, eh?”

 

She stares at him, wide-eyed and horrified, looking like a very genteel bushbaby. He realises her make-up is still flawless, despite the brief episode of wet-eyed sniffling. Christ, she’s a cyborg, or something…

 

“Oh,” she says. “I see. Oh, Jamie, very clever… perspective, of course. Things are not that bad.” She gives him a broad, coral-pink smile. “It’s been good to talk, thank you.”

 

While she’s in his bathroom ‘sorting herself out’, his phone buzzes with a text message from Malcolm. There’s a third Jamie in _another_ parallel universe who shows her the message when she emerges and lets her figure it all out, but real-world Jamie dismisses the idea as suicidal and doesn’t bother memorising the time and place because it’s tomorrow, back at their old Heathrow spot again. He could find his way there in his sleep. He wants to be angry with Malcolm over pitching a fit at him for leaving, and especially for doing it via Sam over the phone, but Malcolm uncharacteristically follows up with a second message that says _my turn to pull you to pieces and fuck you into a howling mess,_ and any pretences at irritation are all redirected into horny.

 

He replies with _you can fucking try, you’ll have to pin me down first_ , and just like that the rules now include sexting as an acceptable interaction – so long as they _never talk about_ the sexting. And delete all evidence, Jamie surmises, reluctantly clearing out his message box as Kelly says goodbye and dithers over whether to kiss him on the cheek or not (not – he still smells like last night).

 

It’s one of a series of rapid changes over the next year. Malcolm seems to have gained a part-time job babysitting the new Minister for Social Affairs, who’s just as bewildered over his vague job description as everybody else. There are far more late-night missions of the un-fun kind and not nearly enough fun ones, and Kelly invites herself around again and again for _talks_ until Jamie has a workable plan in place to kill her and hide the corpse. He learns all kinds of things he doesn’t want to know, and one or two things he files away to use against Malcolm later – the sex thing, for instance; she reports that things are _much better_ in that area if Jamie’s had a chance to get his hands on Malcolm recently. It’s fucked up, and leaves him with the impression that he’s a sort of walking, shouting dildo. At Christmas he buys Kelly a strap-on in the hopes she’ll get the hint and fuck off (she finds it hilarious; Malcolm keeps Jamie on his shit-list until mid-February), but it actually takes Jamie telling her for the five-thousand-and-ninety-eighth time to leave Malcolm for it to actually sink in as a sensible course of action.

 

It’s a muggy, grey, drizzly sort of Thursday morning in the middle of the summer recess, the sort of day where doing anything productive whatsoever seems like a thoroughly laughable notion. Jamie’s happy to be indoors, less happy to be in recovery-mode yet again, and _Christ_ he’s getting old and decrepit if this is a hangover and not bubonic plague. He’d celebrated, just him, all alone in his own flat with a bottle of Moet and an M &S iced birthday cake. It wasn’t his birthday, but it was all he could think of doing, and there was no one he could invite round because there’s no one who can know that the current drama gives him cause for celebration. He’s supposed to be Malcolm’s friend, after all.

 

The champagne had gone down rather too well with all the sugar and carbs. It has been a somewhat vomity morning. And then Sam phones him.

 

He answers the call with, “Fuck off, pet, I’m on holiday.”

 

“Jamie,” she reprimands him, the only person who’d ever dare. Then, after a moment, “Is he with you?”

 

He glares at his bedroom ceiling. “It’s eight in the morning, why would he be here?”

 

Sam, the most humble person Jamie knows, nevertheless sounds smug when she replies. “You know who I’m talking about, though.”

 

The intersection of the Venn diagram of their social circles is not so small Jamie can bluff out of that, and if it was anyone other than Sam… But it is Sam, and he can’t work up anything beyond a weary resignation.

 

“Shit.”

 

“Under the circumstances, I thought, maybe, you and he…”

 

Jamie grits his teeth. “I dunno how much that quick wee brain of yours has figured out, Sammy, but he’s nae fucking here. What’s the matter?”

 

“Well… nothing really. He’s taken a few days off.”

 

That gets Jamie’s attention. He sits up awkwardly in bed, blinking the grit out of his eyes, but the only audible sound he can manage for a moment is, “Hnng?”

 

“And honestly? I think you’re his only proper friend even though…”

 

“You’re saying he’s not taking it well?”

 

“At first he was just how you’d expect. Still professional, just, you know, he dialled the shouting up to eleven, everyone got an earful, absolutely everyone.”

 

Jamie sighs. “Aww, pet. What’d he say to you?”

 

“Nothing really, it was just the new printer, he can’t work it yet… it doesn’t matter. I mean obviously he’s upset. He had me look up professional hitmen yesterday morning, for real. But then he went and had lunch with the PM before he goes on holiday, came back looking really tired, and said he’d be back next Monday.”

 

Jamie sticks a finger up one nostril and waggles it, then gently removes it when his brain threatens to come unstuck.

 

“He’s definitely not there?” Sam sounds hopeful, but not very.

 

“No. How, exactly, did ye know, by the way? And does any other bastard…?”

 

“No, I’d have heard something if… Honestly, Jamie, I wasn’t sure until he cut you out of the whole Hewitt revenge thing. He didn’t even send you round to threaten him with a… a stapler up his cock or whatever.”

 

“That’s not a bad one. Stapler up the cock.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“Then you could sort of slap their cock whenever you wanted to staple something.”

 

“Needs work.”

 

“Aye, well. My head fucking hurts.”

 

Sam’s quiet for a moment. Jamie scratches his balls, tries to think.

 

“Other than that, though?” He’s paranoid, it’s probably the alcohol still sludging through his system, but he’s starting to worry that someone other than Sam could have put the pieces together, and despite himself he’s worried about Malcolm, of all the fucking crazy bullshit. Hewitt’s going to take Malcolm’s shit for now because the facts are the facts, and he did – everyone knows – get caught in a cupboard with Kelly at that charity event for autistic guide-dog puppies or whatever. He’s the fucking bad guy in this. But eventually Malcolm will go too far and it’ll become a slanging match in which Jamie has no intention of becoming ballistic ammunition. But Sam’s making frantic little noises on the other end of the line.

 

“No, no, no, honestly. I figured it out, but I sort of… talk to him properly, you know, about real stuff, and no one else does, really, because they’re all afraid of him, so I… I think maybe I know him better than most. And I think he trusts me because he only ever looks at you like that when no one else is around except me. So, um…”

 

“Looks at me like what?”

 

He can _hear_ Sam blush through the nebulous O2 network.

 

“I don’t want to know the details,” she says, “I don’t care. But I already said – he doesn’t have any other friends, and I think you should go and check on him. Please.”

 

“Why don’t you check on him?” Jamie doesn’t mean it to sound as sharp as it does, she’s the one person in London he watches his tone with, but she takes it easily in her stride.

 

“I can’t go round there, just imagine if a reporter sees me.”

 

Jamie has to concede that, aye, it’d look far more suspicious for the newly-single director of communications to receive house-calls on his days off from his female employees than his male ones.

 

So that’s how Jamie ends up carrying a Tesco bag full of beer cans and the remains of the cake round to Malcolm’s house as soon as he can stand without spots exploding in his vision.

 

Malcolm opens the door, stares at him, and wrinkles his nose in disgust. Jamie supposes he should have showered, at least – maybe even put on a t-shirt he hasn’t worn twice already this week. His jacket could do with a wash. He hates how Malcolm makes him think these kind of things. When he’s alone in the pre-dawn darkness of some architect’s suicide of a hotel room, it’s that hatred that keeps him on course. _She can have that_ , he’d tell himself – the expectations of _hygiene_ and not wearing shoes in the house, the notion that if socks start to get holes in them they ought to be thrown out. Malcolm has standards Jamie wouldn’t know what to do with, standards his mam would call _hoity-toity_ even though the two of them could easily be from the same fucking council estate.

 

But Jamie’s class loyalty always stutters when Malcolm gives him that look. Anyone else would get a pint glass to the face for making him feel uncomfortable in his own skin. But it’s the very same look Malcolm gave him nearly twenty-five years ago now, Jamie just as unwashed and stubbly but also cassocked and due to take his vows.

 

“Get in here,” Malcolm hisses, glancing around as though there’s a single journalist on the planet who’d jump to the conclusion that anyone could be having an affair with Swamp Thing in tracksuit bottoms and a Mogwai t-shirt. Jamie hands him the cake and the beer, stomps through the hall, and drops himself onto the sofa, among the cushions. The blue swirly-pattern one is still here, and the memory of _that_ particular morning makes Jamie feel more nauseated than ever.

 

“The fuck is this?” Malcolm comes through from the kitchen and throws the box of cake at him. Jamie drops it on the coffee table, opens the lid, shoves it towards Malcolm.

 

“Cake. For you, to say congrats, y’know, on losing the mad bitch.”

 

“Oh for _fuck’s sake_ – forget it, get out, we’re not doing this.”

 

“Oh, yes we are.” Jamie’s up off the couch and jabbing a finger at him. “We are fucking doing this, we’re doing it _my_ way for once, okay? I’ve tried living your repressed, pucker-arsed, fucking suit-and-tie city wanker way and you know what? Your way is full of more bullshit than a Medway Burger King.” He jabs himself in the temple. “I’ve had it up to here –“

 

“Yeah, well, that’s not very fucking far-“

 

“Shut up, fucking _shut up_. You’ve upset Sam, poor thing’s worried about you – God only knows why she wastes her energy – and over what? That stuck-up trophy girlfriend you flaunted around the press? You’ve upset our Sam over _her_! You didn’t even fucking _like_ her-“

 

Malcolm advances on him very much like a striking snake, teeth bared, shoves him on the chest, snarls, “How fucking _dare_ you-“ but Jamie knocks his hands away and shouts over him.

 

“Ah, fuck off! You didnae give a shit about her, it was all about you, it’s always about you, Malc! Her, and yeah – fucking _me too_ , that’s all about you and what you want, isn’t it? Fucking admit it!”

 

Malcolm stares him down, mouth open in an angry, silent growl. He points towards the hallway.

 

“Out. Get out. Right the fuck now, _get out!_ ”

 

Jamie grabs the cake off the table, opens the lid, and hurls the entire box at him. He’s already made a mushy, gooey mess of the contents, and the whole thing splatters across Malcolm’s chest and face, the box bouncing away over his shoulder, crumbs and bits of marzipan dropping to the floor. Malcolm wipes at his face, shouts something unintelligible, grabs Jamie by the front of his t-shirt and tries to throw him at the wall, but Jamie gets hold of Malcolm’s elbow and they fall sideways, the coffee table breaking their fall and, Jamie suspects, his hipbone too.

 

Malcolm rolls away, still shouting at him, pulling himself up on the sofa and trying to knock cake off his shirt at the same time. Jamie lunges at him. He grabs the back of Malcolm’s knee and brings him down again, tackles him to the floorboards, shouts “Admit it!” as he pins his hands to the floor and gets a knee on his chest to keep him down.

 

“ _Get off me!_ ”

 

“Admit it, you badly mummified – desiccated – under-stuffed -“

 

Malcolm fights against him, but Jamie’s got bodyweight and brawling experience on his side, and he can’t do much other than try and buck him off, which will take time. Malcolm’s practically spitting with fury, which is why it takes Jamie by surprise when he shouts “Fine!”

 

“What?”

 

Malcolm takes the moment of uncertainty to get his hands free, but Jamie isn’t shifted that easily, and they end up with a grip on each other’s throats, Malcolm attempting to get a knee between Jamie’s legs and disable him that way, Jamie relying on the pain a ten-stone man on his solar plexus must be causing to keep Malcolm from struggling as much as he wants to.

 

“You want to hear that, eh, you psychotic fucking garden gnome? Fine! You and me, you want to talk about that?”

 

“Yeah,” Jamie growls, “let’s fucking hear –“

 

Malcolm jerks up, fast, his forehead crunching into Jamie’s nose. Jamie falls back, rolls onto the floor as Malcolm scrambles to his feet. The pain is a bright flash, a shock but nothing broken, and Jamie pulls himself up on the sofa, staggers, and sits down heavily. Malcolm’s on the other side of the living room, still trying to wipe cake off his shirt, glaring at Jamie as if it’s not _his_ fault for over-reacting.

 

“Fine,” he snarls again. “You want it, you’ve fucking got it, son – I wanted to fuck you, so I did. That’s it, end of story. You and me? Are you fucking _delusional_? Are you actually fucking _blind_ , do you have any idea how much of a categorical fucking _disaster-_ ”

 

“You are a fucking _liar_ ,” Jamie shouts, punctuating each word with a fist slammed into the unfortunate lilac-swirly cushion. He gets back to his feet, the pain in his head already cleared in the wake of adrenaline and rage, and lobs the cushion uselessly at Malcolm, who deflects it with one arm. It knocks a photo frame off the shelf, but neither of them hears it shatter. “A liar and a coward-”

 

“You tragic, twisted little-”

 

“Think you can lie to me? About _this_?” Jamie grabs Malcolm by the shirt again, bares his teeth in a growl as all his pent-up, possessive, jealous anger comes boiling over. “You’re _mine_ , and you fucking know it.”

 

Malcolm shoves him again, hard, and Jamie staggers back towards the table, barely managing not to fall down under his own momentum. With that last exertion of energy, all the fight’s gone out of Malcolm and he stands there breathing heavily, hands loose at his sides, eyeing Jamie sort of side-ways.

 

“What’s the point in this, eh? Nothing can change.”

 

“Not with your fuck-awful attitude.”

 

“What do you _want_ , exactly? Come on then, if we’re doing it your Barney the Big Gay Dinosaur way. What’s your actual fucking problem?”

 

Jamie opens his mouth, but is forced to close it again when nothing useful presents itself on the tip of his tongue. It’s a damn good question. What does he want? He _wants_ to be able to tell the person his life revolves around that his life does, in fact, revolve around him – the whole fucking _world_ revolves… Christ, he has no idea how to put into words what Malcolm does to him. He’s been worried for a while that he’s _in_ _love_ with Malcolm but that’s not the word at all. He was in love with his wife, and he’s always been more than a tiny bit in love with Kate. This is something above and fucking _beyond_ , there’s nothing joyful in it, it absolutely terrifies him, but whatever-the-fuck it is, he wants it more than anything.

 

He wants to wake up in this same bed as this man and not feel like he’s done something wrong. He wants not to have to share him. He wants nobody to give a fuck if they’re fucking. But he can’t have any of that; he’s not an idiot, he knows fine well…

 

He shrugs. Sits down heavily on the coffee table and toys with a loose thread in the hem of his t-shirt. One little tug and the stitching could all come undone.

 

He must look really fucking pathetic because Malcolm sits down on the table beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder. Jamie wants to be in Malcolm’s lap and a million miles from here both at the same time.

 

“I’ve been over this myself,” Malcolm says, rubbing a hand across his tired face. “I thought, for a while, maybe… but...”

 

“Aye,” Jamie agrees. Those little tentacles that started spawning in his chest on the way to Glasgow last year are beginning to grow tiny thorns as they learn to squeeze tighter than ever.

 

And that’s it. Hard to have a heart-to-heart, Jamie supposes, with a man whose doctor is still running diagnostic tests to determine whether or not he actually has one. He picks a bit of marzipan off Malcolm’s shoulder and eats it, earning one of those withering looks Malcolm always gives him when he does something deemed disgusting with food.

 

“So she’s really gone, then,” Jamie ventures.

 

“Yep. Wouldn’t let her back in here if she begged – I mean, fucking _Hewitt_? Jesus, how thick would your beer googles need to be to find a man like that attractive?”

 

“I’d fuck him.”

 

Malcolm opens his mouth but no sound comes out, making him look like he might have short-circuited, and Jamie’s left wondering if he’s got one of those reset buttons on him somewhere that you poke with a pen. He goes rather red around the edges, his hands curling into fists on his knees. Jamie grins and drops a kiss on his neck.

 

“You _are_ a liar.”

 

“Don’t.”

 

For once in his life, Jamie doesn’t push his luck. That’s probably why Malcolm lets him stay the night – or at least part of it. He finds himself back where he started, between Malcolm’s fresh blue sheets, staring at the bright white wall, wondering what the fuck is going on with his life. He sleeps fitfully, waking and dozing and dreaming, until around 2.30 a.m. when Malcolm stirs and pokes him and tells him that it’s time for him to go.


	6. Chapter 6

Jamie’s arse hits the edge of the desk, a box of books and pens and scraps of paper crashing to the floor as he flails a hand behind him to steady himself, something crunching under foot as he tries to keep his balance. It’s not fucking easy, not with Malcolm trying to lay him out flat across a surface far too cluttered to be of any use to them tonight, but he pushes back against the desk, gets himself properly perched so he’s not about to fall, and manages to hook a leg around Malcolm’s hip, maximising friction as they rut against each other. Malcolm’s got his eyes shut and his teeth clamped down on the soft skin beneath Jamie’s jaw, the pain adding a bright, fresh fizzle to the pleasure, and it’s this, it’s always been this, Malcolm’s undivided attention, his hands and mouth and _oh god_ his tongue, the twitch of his cock when Jamie shouts _fuck me, you cunt, for Christ’s sake, just fucking fuck me_ , it’s the grin, the deep, dark laugh, the light in his eyes that says he bloody-well intends to… but, ultimately, it’s being _his_ , even for a little while. For tonight, for a few hours, even if it’s just until he comes, it doesn’t matter – right now what Malcolm wants is _Jamie_ , and that’s just the best drug anyone’s ever known.

***

_Malcolm’s office seemed oddly dark, the morning sunlight slanting in through the window at an awkward angle, casting shadows Jamie had never seen before. The filing cabinets seemed to huddle away in the corner, the couch looked sunken and damaged, the desk was a hulking mound, and the man behind it… he seemed to be the only clearly-drawn thing in the room. The lines of his neck and shoulders and the tired slouch of his back caught the light, white shirt bright but rumpled, tie at exhausted half-mast. A fresh suit hung on the wall behind him, but it had become part of the faded, unreal office, and was therefore intangible, might as well not exist._

_Everyone who could go home had gone to catch up on sleep; even Tom and Dan Miller had fucked off somewhere for brunch, and everyone else who couldn’t just leave was taking a couple of hours’ break. Malcolm remained. So did Jamie, haunting one corner of the office. The night’s adrenaline had just put in its invoice, always overdue from the last time, and he’d have fucked off too if he could. He was desperate for a fag and a kebab and about eighteen hours’ sleep, but that was not an option. Malcolm had locked them in, so all Jamie could do was watch Malcolm catch up with his messages, and wait._

***

He manages to get a hand between them long enough to get his trousers undone, but Malcolm takes hold of his hands and pins them to the desk either side of them. He kisses Jamie on the mouth, far too briefly, Jamie trying to follow as he pulls away and drops his mouth to Jamie’s neck again, his tongue drawing a delirious and mathematically improbable shape all the way from his collarbone to his earlobe, which he kisses and then bites. Jamie yelps, but tugs a hand free and pulls Malcolm’s head back down, where he obliges and sucks and licks and nibbles his ear until Jamie’s squirming beneath him, and he could fucking come just from this, no problem at all, he could come right the fuck now except –

 

Malcolm gets a hand up the back of Jamie’s shirt, fingers exploring ribs and spine and shoulder blade, hiking his shirt up until they have to move apart enough to pull it off. Jamie whines at the loss, but Malcolm’s not in the mood to leave him wanting, and his lips find – _fuck yes_ – the bud of one nipple, brushing lightly, then kissing his ribs, then tonguing back up, lapping, kissing, and finally tugging with his teeth until Jamie’s howling – and he does howl, they’re in his own fucking flat so he’ll do whatever he likes – and he knows by now, after ten years together, that his voice, pitched low and rough with lust, can drive Malcolm to the brink, and he knows exactly the right tone, the right words, the right amount of begging, that if he wanted to he could make Malcolm come without even touching him. He hasn’t tried it – can’t resist touching – but the proof is there when Jamie lets out a string of frantic curses and Malcolm lets him go, stumbles back a few steps, has to stop and get himself under control, taking the moment to unbutton his own shirt as he pants for breath. Jamie grins, wolfish in what might be moonlight if it wasn’t actually a streetlamp outside his bedroom window, pushes himself away from the desk, and does his best to fucking _rip_ the shirt from Malcolm’s shoulders.

***

_Jamie fidgeted. Removed his own tie and shoved it into his pocket, scrubbed a hand through hair that hadn’t seen shampoo in far too long, tapped his feet on the hardwood floor. He could see the lines of tension in Malcolm’s face and knew this wouldn’t last long. He wasn’t keeping Jamie waiting out of spite; more like putting off the inevitable._

_They’d already screamed at each other, cursed each other to hell and back, called each other every vicious, bitingly personal insult they can think of. Malcolm accused him of being everything from a half-cocked, piss-witted, snack-size Iago to a pox-addled low rent whore; Jamie struggled for coherence but gave up fast, resorting to shouting four-letter words inches from Malcolm’s face. To anyone listening, it would have looked like an Earth-shattering, friendship-ending row, bordering on violence – then finally stumbling across that boarder when Jamie kicked and broke a filing cabinet and Malcolm was forced to physically drag him away and shove him at the wall to get him to leave the fucking thing alone and not completely trash Sam’s office systems. But the shouting and swearing meant nothing, beyond frustration vented. It’s never the carelessly hurled insults that cause damage between them; it’s the well-aimed, precision-guided, softly spoken words that have always sliced the deepest. The storm might have passed, but the storm was never the threat._

_Jamie had never been well-known for his abundance of patience; in fact he was known for having something of a deficit. He did a little lap of the office, checked the doors were firmly locked from their side, and peered out of the window into the street below. There were very few people down there, it would be an hour or two yet until Westminster really came back to life. This was their respite. It’d been a long week, a long night, and (somehow) a longer morning, but for just a few hours London’s political elite were sleeping, eating, showering, shitting, shaving, doing their nails, cursing at the cryptic crossword, calling the person they kept promising themselves was more important than all this…_

_Except Malcolm, a wraith who didn’t need to eat or sleep, and who had nobody more important._

***

It’s one of those kisses neither man can stand to end, Jamie with his arms tight around Malcolm’s waist, Malcolm with a fist-full of Jamie’s hair, clinging to each other like they’re on some doomed ship that’s going down fast, and there’s no way off and even if there was the storm is still raging around them, not to mention the tightly circling tiger sharks and hammer-heads, and the sea here is a thousand leagues deep and full of serpents, but fuck ‘em, fuck all of it, because there’s still time for _this_. Jamie backs Malcolm up against the bed, and they somehow get themselves down onto it without breaking apart, Jamie straddling Malcolm’s lap and somehow possessed of the belief that he can get them both stripped from this position. Malcolm grabs him by the hips and rolls him onto his back, kisses his belly and naval, and mouths at the bulge in his jeans until Jamie’s whining and kicking and swearing, and he finally yanks Jamie’s trousers and pants off, chucks them across the room, and takes Jamie’s cock into his mouth, and the best bit of all is the way Malcolm’s eyes roll back, closing in pure pleasure, except no, the best bit is the rumbly, vibrating moan he makes when Jamie grabs his hair, knots his fingers in it, and holds on like he’ll never have to let go.

***

_They couldn’t put it off forever, and eventually Malcolm took off his glasses, rubbed a hand over his grey face, and said “Jamie”. There was a crack in his voice and a deep tiredness, and he beckoned with an outstretched hand. Jamie dragged a chair across the floor, scraping its legs across the antique carpet, and sat himself beside the desk. Malcolm did something he’d never, ever done in this office before and brushed his fingers over Jamie’s knee._

_“We both know what has to happen,” he said, wearily, “So let’s get it done. I have to fire you, you have to go and fuck about in some tragic think-tank or something for a couple of months. Then I’ll bring you back when all this fuckery has become yesterday’s news.”_

_He was right, it was exactly what had to happen. It was the natural progression from there. Malcolm couldn’t be seen to let Jamie’s recent adventures in back-stabbery pass without consequence, no matter how vital he might be to Malcolm’s broad-scale effectiveness. But there was no other bastard could do Jamie’s job quite the same as he did, and no one would be at all surprised when he swans back into the office sometime in early spring to tell every sadsack that’d tried to replace him why they’re a waste of vital blood supplies needed to save dying wee baldy kids._

_“I just… go?” he said. “Then come back when you say so. That’s it, eh?”_

_“That’s it. Back to something resembling normality – whatever the fuck that is – by Easter. Okay?”_

_Jamie’s leg still tingled with the ghost of Malcolm’s touch. “Normality,” he repeated._

_“Aye. Soon as we can. Frankie’ll keep you up to speed on-”_

_“No.”_

_“…What?”_

_“Are you going fucking deaf in your twilight years? I said no, you fucking mental Nutter cunt. This is not how it’s fucking going down, okay?”_

***

Jamie squirms, naked and exposed, every hair on his body static with lust, every nerve-ending tingling, as he rakes his nails through Malcolm’s hair, hips rutting up and finding less than enough friction. He whines helplessly, but Malcolm is just shimmying out of the rest of his clothing, so Jamie helps, tugs off his socks, chucks black trousers in the direction of his own jeans, and pulls Malcolm back against him again, rolls them together, presses Malcolm down among the pillows and kisses him hot and hard and desperate until Malcolm shoves him off. He looks around, and Jamie realises he’s never been here before, nothing’s laid out, and Jamie has to lean over and pull out the bottom drawer and find the lube and hand it to him. He hasn’t got a condom to hand, which they both normally insist on (because Jamie basically looks like the clap personified, and if Malcolm was wasting away no one would ever be able to tell the fucking difference) but _being sensible_ is featuring pretty fucking low on today’s priority checklist.

 

Malcolm drops the lube to one side for now, and shoves Jamie – whose skin is crawling with anticipation – face-first into the sheets, hands sliding up his thighs, lips brushing the small of Jamie’s back. This is what you get at the opposite end of the scale from Malcolm’s blow-job-end-of-story moods – you get _everything_. And Jamie gets bitten, hard, on the arse cheek, and he’s still cursing about it when Malcolm’s tongue flicks out and makes every nerve in his body short-circuit.

 

This is just beyond the boundaries of both their comfort zones, but sometimes comfort is not what you need. Sometimes what you need is a vice-like grip on your cheeks and a broad, flat tongue running between them. And then, when it feels like the pillow is going to smother you and time itself is going to stretch you out and sun-dry you as the rest of the human race marches on, what you need is that same tongue pointed and firm and moving fast, pushing _in_ , and Jamie’s pleased to god he’s already flat out because every joint in his body has basically turned to mush. Malcolm’s grip on his hips prevents him from rutting against the sheets, so he bucks _up_ instead, knees sliding apart, a litany of _shit, fuck, fuckfuckfuck_ moaned into the unfortunate pillow as Malcolm slowly, painstakingly, persuades him to open up.

***

_Malcolm quickly became agitated, eyes narrowed, leaning on the desk, gearing up for a fight he hadn’t really banked on having._

_“Did you get kicked in the head recently? You’ve got to fucking go, okay?”_

_“Aye,” Jamie said, “I know that.”_

_“Then what the fuck do you mean ‘no’? You don’t want to be kept in the loop? You’ve got a problem with Frankie now?”_

_“I’ve always had a problem with Frankie, he’s a fucking human Weetabix, ye only have tae pour a bit of milk on him and he loses all integrity. I mean no, Malc, I’m not coming back again. That’s what ‘no’ means.”_

_One of Malcolm’s eyebrows twitched, and the resultant incredulous expression was one Jamie didn’t like at all._

_“That is pathetic.”_

_“It’s not pathet-“_

_“It’s fucking pathetic, you single-celled parasite. What is this, Dawson’s fucking Creek? If I sack you I’ll never see you again? You think you’re actually indispensable and I’ll just let you stay if you threaten you’ll never return?”_

_“No,” Jamie kept his voice calm but he felt ready to explode, perhaps literally. “I’m fucking done. I resign. It’s over, all of it, this rancid, festering, botfly-infested party, this miserable fucking city, I’m fucking done with all of it.”_

_They stared at each other. Jamie said, “I’m going home.”_

_***_

Malcolm doesn’t linger long, but moves up Jamie’s body, kisses his spine, licks the inner plane of a shoulder blade, and _bites_ him on the back of the neck. Jamie yelps, and when he flinches, Malcolm performs some ridiculously smooth move where he gets an arm under Jamie, encourages him onto his back, and ends up between Jamie’s legs with the little glass bottle in hand. With the barest amount of lube, he gives Jamie a few long, hard strokes, and then stops and watches him for a moment.

 

“Fucking hell… get on with it, yeh big cunt tease.”

 

Jamie kicks him, and Malcolm grins, kisses him, shoves Jamie’s knee to one side and slides two lubed-up fingers over his balls and behind, rubbing over and around until Jamie kicks him again, swearing with impatience, and he eases one finger inside.

 

It takes time – there’s no one else on the planet Jamie would ever consider letting anywhere near his arse, and it’s been a while since either of them wanted it like this – but all they’ve got left now is time. Malcolm’s using it carefully. He runs lips and tongue over Jamie’s skin, loosely strokes his cock, tongues at the jut of his hip and the crease of his thigh, all to relax him, to get that finger in as far as possible, to make him _need_ it as well as want it, and when he does, when he’s begging and his feet are scrabbling at the sheets, when he’s red and flushed and kicking, Malcolm fucks him on two fingers as he murmurs to Jamie such erotic nothings as _you ridiculous little cunt_ and _don’t even pretend you aren’t thinking about food right now_ and _if I catch fucking syphilis I’ll fucking skin you alive and drag you from one end of Broadstairs beach to the other_. It doesn’t matter what he’s saying, only that he’s talking, the sound of his voice is enough, the low, dark, lusty purr that only Jamie ever gets to hear any more, it’s his, it’s all his, for another few hours.

 

Malcolm removes his fingers and uses half the bottle of lube on himself, shoving Jamie back down when he tries to sit up ( _“…the fuck’re you doing, just let me…”_ ) and moves up over him, kisses his throat and his chin and his mouth, Jamie grabbing onto his shoulder and arm, and with a quick roll of Malcolm’s hips everything starts coming together.

 

 

There’s a moment of stillness, as there always is when Malcolm’s inside him. Jamie’s tense, his arms locked around Malcolm’s neck, his breathing rapid and shallow, but they don’t need to talk about any of this anymore, they know each other so fucking well. Malcolm owns him completely in these moments, because he’s so very much his usual self – all strength, and hard, sharp angles, and no retreat – but his fingers stroke across Jamie’s skin, his lips finding the warm pulse in Jamie’s neck, and he’s still talking, the nonsense interspersed with soft things, _mine_ growled against his throat, _beautiful, so fucking beautiful…_ and Jamie knows, he’s not stupid, he knows this is Malcolm at his manipulative best, but they’ve done this before, he’s said these things before, in safer, easier times, and Jamie’s dismissed them before, so he can do it again now. He forces himself to take long, shuddering breaths, lets the tension ease from his muscles, lets Malcolm in a little deeper, both of them sighing, and Malcolm kisses him just beneath his ear, calls him _darling_ , rolls his hips very carefully, and when he gets the angle just right, Jamie whimpers. From there it’s easier. A steady pressure and a strong hand, long fingers wrapped around his cock, the shallow rhythm of Malcolm’s hips, hot breath making Jamie dizzy as Malcolm presses his face to the curve of neck and shoulder, sinking into him all the way.

***

_Malcolm looked away. His lips were thin and tight, his hand clenched loosely around his mobile phone as though he could ignore Jamie and get back to work and everything would go exactly how he assumed it would go. He could do that if he wanted, Jamie didn’t care. He pulled a scruffy envelope out of his inside pocket and thrust it at Malcolm, who eyed it like it might be a letter bomb. Jamie only had fifteen minutes to type this up, but it had all the right words even if not all the right punctuation, and it was signed and in an envelope and everything. When Malcolm refused to acknowledge it, Jamie put it on the desk in front of him._

_“My resignation,” he said, getting up off his chair. “Effective pretty much fucking immediately. You’ll find I never actually signed my contract, so…”_

_“You’re over-reacting, sit the fuck down-”_

_“No, no, this is_ under _-reacting. An equivalent response would be to burn Whitehall to the ground and build something less syphilitic, bloated, and inbred up from scratch, but I haven’t got the fucking energy anymore.”_

_“Don’t be so fucking dramatic.”_

_“I’m not being dramatic. I’m pissed off, and I’m done, and I’m going home.”_

_Malcolm picked up the envelope, turned it over, tucked his thumb under the flap but didn’t open it. He shrugged, exhausted himself, and put the envelope on top of his overflowing in-tray._

_“Okay. There should still be a car around, take one home, get some sleep, we’ll both get some fucking sleep, and then we’ll talk tonight.”_

_“No, I mean home, as in Glasgow. I’ve got a flight tomorrow morning. Bloke’s coming round today to load my stuff in a van. Is any of this sinking the fuck in, Malc?”_

_“You’ve lost the fucking plot, son.”_

_“Ach, whatever the plot was supposed tae be, it’s disintegrated into a complete fucking farce with slapstick and fart jokes where the humanity and fucking_ morality _was meant to be. There’s no plot anymore. The story’s done, now we’re on the shit sequel with the C-list actors, and the director’s started smoking crack and couldn’t give a shit, and it’s going straight to the HMV three-DVDs-for-a-tenner bin. The franchise is over – it never fucking took off. It tried to stand out from the vacuous, over-budgeted, shiny special-effects crowd, but ultimately it just loves itself too fucking much, and it’s imploded under its own weight. You couldn’t even get Sandra Bullock to appear in it if you paid her in nose jobs.”_

_“You believe that? If you actually believe that, what good do you think you’ll do by running away?”_

_“Absolutely none at all, and who the fuck cares? I’ve been here so long I’ve got nieces and nephews who only know me as the uncle who might show up at Christmas and sends fifty quid in a card for birthdays, because apparently –_ apparently _– this fucking circus show is more important than they are. Fact is, it’s just not. This was the last fucking straw. I’m done, I’m away.”_

_Malcolm picked up the envelope again, held it as if about to rip it in two, and he could for all Jamie cared. He had another copy addressed to Sam. Not that it mattered – it was just a formality. He’s going anyway. But a tiny tremor ran through Malcolm’s hand and he dropped the letter back on top of his pile of paperwork, looked away, the sunlight shading deep shadows in the hollows of his neck and jaw and cheek. He looked like someone sketched him there in that chair, then had to go before they could colour him. He looked like sunlight could make him fade away._

***

It’s fucking hot in here, Jamie feels delirious with sweat and sensation as they move faster, dragging his nails down Malcolm’s back and making him yelp, sinking teeth into his shoulder, pulling hard on his hair. Malcolm is never less in control of himself than when he’s got Jamie wriggling and whining and falling to pieces beneath him, when he’s buried in Jamie, drowning in him, and this is exactly what Jamie needs, to feel Malcolm lose it and all because of _him_. 

 

They fuck like they do everything else together. It’s violent and loud as Jamie shouts formless words, and Malcolm bites whatever he can reach, the sheets are rumpled and shoved and torn out of the way, and the headboard bangs against the wall; it’s probably ugly from the outside, and, when they have time, they _indulge_ in it, and drag it out, and make it last as long as possible. This is where everything is said, where every gaze that couldn’t linger, every touch denied, every term of endearment left silent and hanging at the end of a sentence, this is where it’s all made up for.

 

Malcolm slows the rhythm, stops moving all but for the shallowest rocking of his hips as he kisses Jamie, deep and slow. He runs a hand along Jamie’s thigh, pushes his knee up, pressing himself _in_ as deep as physically possible as he tugs at Jamie’s lip with his teeth. Jamie’s hands roam, feeling the familiar lines and juts and dips of Malcolm’s body, scrawnier than ever but still fitting the map he has committed to memory. He can’t take this for long, he _needs_ … and it doesn’t take more than a tiny noise, the only sound he can make for the moment, to get Malcolm moving again, slowly, carefully, building it all back up again, forcing them as close as physically possible. Jamie locks one ankle round the other and holds on tight.

 

Somewhere, Malcolm’s phone rings, but even if he did answer it now coherence would be a very distant hope. Jamie curses the sound, nonetheless, and whoever thinks they _have the right_ to – but Malcolm kisses him and says _here, darlin’, we’re here_ , so Jamie curses him too, kicks him, yells at him to just fucking _move_ , which he does, dropping his forehead to Jamie’s chest as they find the rhythm that’ll end them both.

 

Malcolm comes like he always does, quiet and shuddering, and he immediately wraps a hand around hard flesh, keeps the pace as best he can, and drags Jamie down with him.

 ***

_“There’s nothing,” Malcolm says, his voice barely audible even in the rare silence, “to keep you here at all?”_

_Jamie bites down hard on his lip and shakes his head._

_“Nothing I can…?”_

_“Nope.”_

_“For Christ’s sake, Jamie!” A rare red flush fills in the white of Malcolm’s face, and he’s up on his feet and pacing, moving because (as Jamie understands it) if he sits still for too long he’ll become clogged up with nervous, explosive energy and die, like a shark. When he’s burned off enough to become stable again, he leans on the desk with both hands and says, “Don’t – for fuck’s sake, don’t go.”_

_Jamie gets up too. He’s not sure if Malcolm knows it, but there’s a limit to Jamie’s resolve, and that, asking him directly, might not be enough to break it but it’s certainly leaning heavily against it. He can’t look at Malcolm, this whole thing feeling like another betrayal, but a real one this time. This isn’t part of the game; it’s stamping on the pieces, pouring lighter fluid on the board, and striking a match. Guilt’s a toxic childhood friend he long ago beat up and left bleeding in an alleyway, done with its shit, but he’s starting to feel a familiar tug in his gut again, and Malcolm’s gone weirdly, horribly quiet, leaning there, the words still hanging between them in the grey air._

_Somewhere outside, a car alarm goes off, but it’s distant and faint. London’s bleeding in. Jamie can’t do this anymore, especially when Malcolm moves towards him, lifts a hand as if to touch him, changes his mind, looks away and just says “don’t go,” again, asking not as his boss but as… something else. Whatever they are. There’s no word for it, because there’s no definition to it, and this, all of it, the nameless, formless thing they’ve been dragging out between them, is all part of why_ _he can’t stay here anymore._

***

The room feels small and dark and far too warm. Doesn’t feel like Jamie’s bedroom at all. Everything is strangely unfamiliar, from the wardrobe with its doors open and its bare, gutted interior, to the shadows moving across the wall as the tree outside flails its branches in the wind. He can hear movement in the flat upstairs, wonders briefly if they could hear what just happened down here, decides he couldn’t give a fuck about his neighbours if fucks were going out of style.

 

He turns. In an almost reflexive response, Malcolm reaches for him, and Jamie rests a reassuring hand on his chest. He grabs a couple of tissues to clean himself off, drops them in the wastepaper basket, finds himself still breathing deeply. Maybe it’s time to ease off the fags a wee bit?

 

“Just gonnae open the window.”

 

He slips off the bed and yanks back the curtains, letting a bit more light flood in through the sash window. He flips up the lock and hefts it up, and it resists, as it always does, until he persuades it to shimmy up a few precious inches, letting in a listless breeze. There’s a door stop which he shoves in on its thick end to balance the window open, and that’s about as good as it’s getting. He wants a shower, he’s sweaty and certain that he stinks, and he kinda wishes they’d looked for a condom, but there’s nothing on heaven or Earth that could stop him from climbing straight back into bed.

 

Malcolm puts an arm around him, Jamie snuggles up against his side, and they find themselves lying there, face-to-face. Malcolm, somewhat alarmingly, is frowning at him.

 

“What?” Jamie asks, restless fingers stroking Malcolm’s chest.

 

“It wasn’t because she was a woman,” Malcolm says, then his scowl deepens when Jamie doesn’t seem to immediately get what he means from this cryptic clue. “Kelly,” he adds. “I know she told you all that shit, she fucking shouldn’t have, but… for the record, it wasn’t to do with her being a woman, okay? I’m not… Look. It was because she wasn’t _you_.”

 

Jamie grins. “That’s the gayest thing you’ve ever said. That’s including all the times you’ve begged for my cock up your arse, _and_ the time you told Sam to make sure your mocha latte had exactly a shot and a half of chocolate in it. In fact, that’s the single gayest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, and I was watching _Queer Eye for the Straight Guy_ earlier.”

 

“I know. Shut up. That’s all I wanted to say, okay?”

 

“When I say _watching_ , it was on in the background. I wasn’t paying attention.”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Malc.”

 

“What?”

 

Jamie brushes two fingers against Malcolm’s jaw, where there’s a little scratchy stubble. “Come with me.”

 

“Oh piss off, Jamie. I’ve got a job to do, remember?”

 

“Fuck ‘em. They don’t deserve what’s left of you. I do.”

 

“It’s called _responsibility_. Do you have a dictionary? You might want to look that one up.”

 

It’s the answer Jamie knew he’d get, but that doesn’t mean hearing it isn’t a kick to the gut. He moves closer, tucks his head into the crook of Malcolm’s shoulder, mostly so they’re no longer eye-to-eye. Malcolm’s palm rests against his back, and they stay like that until Malcolm’s dozing, and Jamie’s chest no longer feels like it’s burning, and he lets himself claim a few more hours’ sleep before it’s time to go.

***

 _Jamie was back at his flat before really being aware of anything again. Exhausted and wrung out, he collapsed onto the couch and slept one of those fathomless black sleeps of almost pure REM, and when his eyes snapped open again it was late afternoon. He checked his phone. Messages from everyone in the Number 10 communications office asking was it true, had he really quit? Then there was a more pragmatic email asking for his recommendation on how they ought to split his workload (he answered that in his best professional tone), and someone with a death wish had copied him into an interdepartmental email with the subject line “the pit bull has been put down!!” detailing the time and place of a celebration organised by advisors to the Minister for Health. He hit ‘reply all’, typed_ "I still know what flavour of filth every one of you cuntwarts wanks to, so fucking watch out, woof woof’ _, and copied in Malcolm, Frankie, and Sam. Losing Malcolm’s respect was a laughable notion because you never fucking had it in the first place, but due to her position and her kind-heartedness, Sam’s respect was the most sought-after commodity in the whole of South East England, even (especially) if you were a government minister. It was Jamie’s last act of political terrorism before he put his Blackberry away._

_He hit send, got up, and started packing up the few things he could be bothered to take with him. Toaster, kettle, none of that shit, he’ll just leave them behind for the landlord to chuck out. He had a few books and DVDs borrowed from friends and co-workers, and spent half an hour putting them in jiffy bags with addresses scrawled on the front in marker pen. He hesitated, but kept the Pratchett novel Malcolm lent him years ago, because he never did get around to re-reading it and because fuck him. (It certainly had nothing to do with the scrap of notepaper still wedged in the back, Malcolm’s make-shift bookmark with Jamie’s contact details written on it in fading green biro – his name written once and then traced over again and again until there was a tactile impression in the back of the paper and when you flipped it over you could read a mirror-image of_ Jamie _clear as day; another one of those little mysteries Jamie occasionally stumbled across that made him pause and wonder if he shouldn’t just shove Malcolm up against the door of Number 10, kiss him stupid, and stick two fingers up at the flashing cameras.)_

_He packed his clothes into a battered old suitcase, then went through the bathroom, took his toothbrush and razor from the cabinet, an old, neglected comb, some tweezers he wasn’t entirely aware he owned. It all went into the pocket of the case._

_There wasn’t much else he cared enough about to take. He stood in the middle of his flat and looked around. The bloke with the van would bring a few bits of furniture up north for him – the coffee table, the sofa, a couple of chairs and his bookcase, as well as the mattress and bedside tables, stuff he couldn’t be bothered to replace at the other end. The place would be bare and empty, unlived in, within twenty-four hours. Jamie was not the kind of man to take his time, mull things over, or leave anything half-done, and home-sickness is a disease which is seldom diagnosed before it’s terminal._

_He sent his landlord a message saying he’d pay out his lease but he’s going, and then found himself at a loose end. It was growing dark again, the streetlamp outside flickering on, changing the shadows in subtle, familiar ways. He picked up the TV remote, but before he could turn the set on, the flat’s intercom buzzed. There weren’t very many people that could be, so he figured Kim, his sister, had decided to come round and say goodbye tonight instead of tomorrow. He picked up the receiver and hit the buzzer, then filled the kettle, set out a couple of mugs with teabags in, opened the front door, and found himself face-to-face with Malcolm. He must have gone home first because he’d dressed down, lost the tie, changed into a lighter shirt. He looked like he'd given this some thought._

_“What do you want?” Jamie demanded, blocking the doorway. “We’ve got nothing to discuss. I’m fuckin’ going and that’s final.”_

_Malcolm glanced around the stairwell as though he thought there might be a reporter lying in wait, but he nodded, and he finally met Jamie’s gaze._

_“I know,” he said. “I came to say goodbye.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The wonderful Luluxa has illustrated this chapter:  
> http://luluxa.tumblr.com/post/74190929915/live-with-me-an-illustration-to-the-awesome


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little sort-of interlude of a chapter.

Iain MacDonald is a creature of habit. Every second Friday night, he picks up the grandchildren, and every subsequent Sunday he takes them back to Queen Street station, where he lifts Alfie onto the train, helps Aimee find their seats, and tucks their luggage safely onto the overhead shelf. He makes sure Alfie has the bag of sandwiches, kisses them both on the head, and hops off the train just in time, waving them both off as they head back to their parents.

 

He’s an old-fashioned kind of bloke, so unlike Cara, his daughter, he doesn’t really worry about them once they’re out of sight. He used to go to and fro, up and down, on the train all the time as a boy. Kids aren’t stupid, he always tells her. They’ll sit tight and behave, and besides, it’s only twenty minutes and she’s eleven this year, let her have this little bit of responsibility. Let her brother learn to trust her.

 

Iain reads a lot. A long time ago, he read a book that said every family has a pivotal member in each generation, someone the other family members all look to, and flow around, and he’s vaguely aware that it’s him. It used to be his mum, but now it’s him. His family all tend to trust what he says, and Cara has since been telling all her friends how gown-up Aimee is, taking her brother on the train every second weekend. It’s a power he tries to use for good, but on the other hand, his habits do always tend to take him, after the train vanishes into the distance, out the George Street exist, down the stairs, and into the Wetherspoons bar.

 

Iain’s nephew, Iggy, works in Wetherspoons on the weekends, and always pulls him a free pint when the boss isn’t looking. This time, Iain orders a cheeseburger and chips and _extra_ fucking chips, gimmie a proper portion, eh, kid? Iggy runs through the order through, and grins at him.

 

“Nearly finished uni for the year,” he says.

 

“Oh, aye? What’s summer hold for you then, kid?”

 

Iggy shrugs. “Dunno, thought me and some mates might go to Magaluf. You been there?”

 

“Nope. Spain’s too hot. Won’t catch me further south than fuckin’ Keswick. You just behave yourself, eh, kid?”

 

“Yes, Uncle Iain. You’ll need your table number.”

 

“I’ll be outside.”

 

“No food outside, Uncle Iain. Sorry.”

 

Iain grumbles under his breath, but puts his number and his coat on an empty table near the back, and heads outside for a smoke.

 

“Oh, hey!” Iggy calls after him. “Uncle Jamie was just here for you. I said to come back in twenty minutes.”

 

“When was that?”

 

“Emm… twenty minutes ago?”

 

Iain shrugs and heads outside, where he takes a seat near the entrance and lights a cigarette. He’s officially given it up, did so years ago, but when he’s on his own, well – who cares? It’s only the odd one or two, and anyway, he’d sooner throw himself in front of that train than smoke around the kids. If he can’t reward himself for that, then…

 

It’s a warm afternoon, with a blue sky and a soft breeze. It’s so pleasant that even the tourists seem happy, milling about the square or dragging suitcases up to the station or into the back of a taxi. August has faded into September, but summer’s set to hang in for a while yet, filling the city with lasses in skirts, and lads who can’t seem to keep their shirts on. At Iain’s age, it’s inevitable that the mind wanders back to summers past, and as he sits and sips his pint and smokes his roll-up, he thinks about the house where he grew up, and the fields behind it, and his brothers heading out en mass for the stream where you could sometimes catch a fish, cousin Terry with them, Robbie forever hot on their heels, trying to be one of the big boys. Cam’d be dragging a stick, stirring up the grass, hoping to find a snake or a rabbit, while Stevie, at fourteen or fifteen, regaled them all with his latest half-true story about a girl who let him see her knickers, and wee Jamie followed along, almost hidden among the grass, dragging his fishing net and refusing to let anyone put him on their shoulders…

 

Things could be pretty fucking _awful_ in the Macdonald household, but they could be good, too, with the right attitude. Those are the sort of days that can never be re-lived or reclaimed, but they’re the days he hopes Jamie and Kim and the other younger kids, he hopes they remember. He’s sure they do. It might have taken him twenty-odd years, but Jamie did, after all, come back home.

 

Despite having him live locally again, seeing Jamie is always a bit of a jolt for Iain. In his head, his baby brother is an eternal wild twelve-year-old, all skinny limbs, mad black curls, skinned knees, and bits of mud and leaf and twig clinging to his clothes and hair. Nearly forty years on, he’s still scrawny and fluffy, but he generally looks like a normal person, at least until he opens his mouth and says something ridiculous. He’s calmed down a lot, since he moved to London. No pub fights, no raging domestics with 2 a.m. police intervention, barely any booze except on weekends. It’s nice to see him settled, and it’s nice, though quite unusual, to have his company on a Sunday afternoon.

 

Jamie drops himself into the seat opposite Iain with a _hiya_ and reaches over to nick his cigarette.

 

“Gimmie that back.” Iain tosses Jamie the pouch, and watches as he cack-handedly rolls himself one. Iggy, on some silent cue, brings Jamie a half-pint and earns himself that withering, blood-boiling look that Jamie picked up somewhere in London. Iggy blissfully ignores it and asks if Jamie’s eating too (yes he is, jacket potato and beans and if you put butter anywhere near it again I’ll tie you to the fucking train track, so help me, you’re just as bad as your fucking _delinquent_ father, get out of my fucking face).

 

“Kids these days,” Iain intones with a smirk.

 

“Insolent wee _shite_ -head,” Jamie mutters, lighting his ragged fag. “Kids gone off all right?”

 

“Aye. Peace and quiet again.”

 

“Yeah, pretend you don’t prefer having them around.” Jamie looks out towards the square, distracted, fidgety. He’s always been a bit weird, that one, but Iain can tell normal-weird from bad-weird, and the rhythm Jamie’s tapping on the table-top with his fingers is erratic, senseless, nervous. It’s nothing to do with Iggy’s cheeky table-service, either.

 

Iain decides to go out on a limb.

 

“How’s Gemma?”

 

Jamie shrugs, apparently fascinated by a man trying to persuade a nervous dog to cross the road. “Aye, she’s fine.”

 

“And wee Hannah?”

 

“Good. At her dad’s. Back tonight.”

 

Iain stubs out his cigarette (his stomach is rumbling and his burger must be nearly done by now). “So, clearly you’re making the most of your last few hours alone, then, eh?”

 

Jamie glares at him, but he recognises the fag-out cue, picks up his glass, and they head inside. There’s Iain’s burger, and a couple of fresh pints (two whole ones this time, Iggy doesn’t have an actual death-wish) waiting on the table with his coat. There’s the usual little ritual where Jamie picks all the salad out of his burger and steals a handful of chips, while Iain threatens to wound him fatally, until Jamie’s meal arrives and they eat in silence for a while.

 

“She’s gone out,” Jamie says, eventually.

 

“Oh, aye?” Iain pretends to be only mildly interested.

 

“Yeah, she wanted me to go with her. Museum or something, I dunno. Told her I wasn’t feeling great, needed a rest.”

 

“You don’t look ill.”

 

“Well, I’m not. I just needed to think, alone. Look – I’ve got to tell someone, right? I don’t think this was, ultimately, a very good idea. Me and Gem? Didn’t you used to tell me – someone did, mebby it was Terry, but I think it was you that used to tell me never to go back to an ex, right?”

 

Iain chews thoughtfully, swallows with a gulp of his pint. “Sure,” he says, “but there’s exceptions, ain’t there? You and Gem weren’t wrong for each other-”

 

“What if we are?”

 

“You’re not. You fit together. It was circumstances, wasn’t it? The whole baby thing, she was upset all the time, you felt inadequate-”

 

“Fuck off.”

 

“You did, I remember. But that’s over now, eh? She’s got a kid, she’s left her scumbag husband, and who comes back into town but the first man she ever loved, the man she wanted to be a father to her baby. That’s a fucking fairytale, right?”

 

“Right. It’s not real.”

 

“Och, _Jamie_. Don’t do that to yourself. It is real, she’s yours again, and the kid loves you too, doesn’t she?”

 

Jamie stabs at his food with his fork, making an unappealing mush of tomato sauce, potato, and the leafy bits from the side of Iain’s plate. “Yeah,” he says, like it’s painful to admit. Iain sighs, puts his own cutlery down, watches Jamie morosely squash a bean with the prongs of his fork.

 

“You’re gonnae walk out on them, aren’t you?”

 

“Listen. I just need you to listen, okay?”

 

“Okay.”

 

“She doesn’t… I can’t… It’s not right. It doesn’t feel right. I love her, I do, but she’s not mine.”

 

“Isn’t that up to her?”

 

“Well. I’m not hers. Something like that.”

 

Iain feels a bit out of his depth here. He’s always tried to provide support and advice to anyone in his family, but Jamie has never been easy to help. He’s too good at sabotaging himself, better at it than Robbie with his jail time, or Cam the serial adulterer… There’s always been something extra complicated about Jamie.

 

“Well, whose are you, then? If not hers? That implies there’s someone else.”

 

Jamie almost cringes, shakes his head. “No, there isn’t.”

 

“A girl in London?”

 

“Uh. No.”

 

He might be a bit old fashioned in some ways, but there are things Iain knows more about than he lets on, and he really does know his brothers very well. And it’s like his mum used to say when they saw teenaged Jamie dressed up and ready to go out – with seven boys, statistically at least _one_ of them was probably…

 

“A _bloke_ in London?”

 

Jamie almost chokes on nothing, but he’s shaking his head. “No. Fuck off. Stop it. Look, I can’t… There’s nobody else, I can’t explain it any better, I just need you to understand, okay? It doesn’t feel right, and if I stay any longer… fuck, look, Gem really, really fuckin’ deserves someone who can be a proper husband and father and all that, right? And it’s not me, okay? So it’s better to go now than lead her on. If I’m wrong, tell me.”

 

He’s not wrong, not that Iain has much to go on. “If you feel that way…”

 

“Getting back with her was your stupid idea, anyway.”

 

“Fuck off, I just got you her number, you’re the one that dialled it. What’d you do that for if you felt this way?”

 

Jamie shrugs. “I figured it’d work out. I do love her, and the kid’s a sweet thing, and I thought I was the missing piece in their puzzle, but…” He stabs at the potato again. “I think someone’s trimmed my edges and I don’t fucking fit any more.”

 

“So what’ll you do?”

 

“I dunno. Talk to her, I suppose, before Hannah gets home. Can’t let the kid watch me leave.”

 

Iain nods quietly. “If it feels wrong,” he says, “you’re doing the right thing.”

 

“Aye, I know. Just needed to hear someone else say it.”

 

A movement from the next table catches Iain’s eye; someone turning the pages of a tabloid, that same gaunt, grey figure _still_ on the front page. He looks back at Jamie.

 

“Not going back to London, are you?”

 

“No,” says Jamie, a little too quickly. Then he shakes his head, and says “no” again, more convincingly. He drains his glass and turns to glare at Iggy until they both get another.

 

“Stupid kid,” he mutters.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Only stupid people need three extra years’ education before they can get a fucking job, eh?”

 

That’s some quality Jamie-logic. Iain orders dessert, though Jamie doesn’t ( _explain again why you can’t eat apple pie, I never understood that one_ ) and tries to cheer his brother up with stories of Aimee and Alfie’s weekend with their grandparents. That, at least, gets a few smiles from him, especially the bit about Alfie getting the better of his big sister in Saturday morning’s water fight, with ingenious usage of the wheelbarrow, filled with water and ready to tip over when she came at him with a plant mister.

 

But Jamie’s gone quiet, his resolve set, and he refuses the offer of another drink. He hands Iain a scruffy twenty, refuses to take it back, and gives Iggy a little goodbye wave.

 

“See you on Tuesday?” Iain asks.

 

“Eh?”

 

“The BBQ. You should come round, the whole crowd will be there. It’ll do you good.”

 

Jamie nods, gives him a companionable pat on the shoulder. Iain watches as he trots up the stairs, out of the door, off to ruin his own life yet again.

 

***

 

Several miles away, Megan Tucker’s kitchen is on fire.

 

She elbows her gawking teenage son out of the way, shoves her giggling (and probably psychopathic, it does run in families) daughter back into the living room, and grabs the fire extinguisher out of the snack cupboard. She quickly assesses the situation – Danny has been attempting to cook pancakes, the dozy twerp – aims the fire extinguisher, pulls the pin, squeezes the handles, and watches as bugger-all happens.

 

“It’s empty from last time, Mum,” says Danny, his eyes watering from the smoke.

 

Megan shoves the fire extinguisher into his arms, grabs a damp towel off the radiator, and spreads it, with practiced ease, over the flaming pan. The temperature in the room drops several degrees, and Megan throws open the windows and doors, trying to get some fresh air in and some of the oily smoke out.

 

Behind her, somewhere in the living room, the intro to _Bad Reputation_ starts, sounding slightly muffled. Jenny giggles again. Wee brat has, apparently, hidden Megan’s phone.

 

“Clean that up,” she snaps at Danny. The teen rolls his eyes and grabs the pan off the stove.

 

_A girl can do what she wants to do and that's what I'm gonna do, an' I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation…_

 

“You find that damn phone – that’s your uncle Malcolm – if I don’t answer he’ll probably order a drone strike on us or something – give me my phone!”

 

Jenny pulls the phone out from under a sofa cushion, but pulls it away when Megan tries to take it. Megan sighs, picks up a cushion, and swats her daughter with it until the mad giggling turns into _I’mgonnapee I’mgonnapee!_ and the phone drops to the floor. Megan snatches it up.

 

“Hey, Malcy. Sup.”

 

“Megs.” He sounds tired. He usually does. “You okay?”

 

“Yeah, sure. Normal, boring Sunday. Why? Are _you_ okay? You only call if something’s wrong, are you dying? If you’re dying, make sure and tell mum before me, okay? Hang up and call her first. Bye.”

 

“What? Shut up. I’m not dying. Why did you think that?”

 

“Oh, you know, all the… I don’t know, you always look like it’d only take one vigorous sneeze to finish you off.”

 

“Shut up.”

 

“ _Stop_ telling me to shut up. Forty-two years you’ve been telling me to shut up. You were telling me to shut up before I could fucking _speak-_ ”

 

“ _Shut. Up._ ”

 

“Fine. What? Oh, hey, I’ll put you on speaker so you can say hello to the kids-”

 

“No, don’t-”

 

“Say hello to Uncle Malcolm.”

 

Jenny peers over Megan’s shoulder at the phone. “Why don’t you Facetime?”

 

“Facewhat?”

 

“Hello, Jenny,” says Malcolm, in that weary-but-kind voice he reserves for the children. “We can’t Facetime because I haven’t got an iPhone. Are you being a good girl for your mum?”

 

“Emm… no.”

 

“Well done. How’s school?”

 

“Terrible, Uncle Malc. My teacher’s a twat.”

 

“Good. You make sure and tell him.”

 

“Yes, Uncle Malc.”

 

Danny wanders over with the burnt-out pan dangling by his side. “Are you in trouble again, Uncle M? I watched it all on the telly, it was _way_ cool. I’ve told all my friends that my uncle’s going to prison, they all think it’s _way_ cool too.”

 

“He’s not going to prison,” snaps Megan.

 

There’s an ominous silence on the other end of the line.

 

“Couldn’t you be dying instead?” Megan whines. “You’re gonna make me tell mum, aren’t you?”

 

“COOL,” Danny shouts. “You should get a prison tat. And shank people with the sharp end of a spoon. And-”

 

“I want to go to prison too,” Jenny chimes in.

 

“I’m sure you will, one day. Right, clear off, both of you, I’m talking to your uncle in private. Go and play with the traffic, bugger off.”

 

When the room’s empty, Megan slumps back on the couch and jams the phone between her ear and the cushion.

 

“You,” she says, “were supposed to be the responsible one.”

 

“I never agreed to that.”

 

“Aye, you did, but you were on a bit of a weird trip at the time, so…”

 

“You do have to tell mum. Okay?”

 

“I refuse.”

 

“Tell her sort of like I used to do for you, okay? _Hey, mum, did you know Meg’s going out with that thirty-year-old sleezebag you hate and by the way I’m moving to London, bye_. Okay?”

 

“I don’t have a moving-to-London to distract her with.”

 

“Lie. Say you’re pregnant. Tell her you’re a porn star. Anything.”

 

“I can’t be pregnant, you have to have had a dick up you recently to be pregnant, you’re more likely to be pregnant than me.”

 

“Just invent something. Or, I dunno, just fucking tell her straight.”

 

“Why don’t you do it?”

 

There’s another of those silences. Malcolm sounds like he’s pacing.

 

“She’ll cry,” he says. “I can’t deal with that.”

 

“ _I’m_ going to cry, Malc. Fuck you.”

 

He sighs. “Fuck you too, pet. C’mon. I never ask you for anything.”

 

“No, you don’t, but you should – I could help…”

 

“I doubt that.”

 

“Yeah, but…”

 

“Look, it’s fine, it’s not like it is in films, okay? It’ll be an open prison. I’ll find you a nice white-collar criminal to exchange sexy letters with, how about that?”

 

“You’d better.”

 

“I’ll call you again soon, Megs.”

 

And then he’s gone. The sounds of the city, of traffic and dogs and screaming kids, bleed back in though the house. The smell of burnt oil still hangs in the air, and for the first time in decades, Megan misses her stupid, reckless, selfish brother keenly.


	8. Chapter 8

One time it was different

** Wednesday **

 

Jamie tries to act like a normal person as he gathers up about a dozen packets of crisps, a huge bag of peanuts, a Ginsters pasty, and as many chocolate bars as he can grab. It shouldn’t be a hard act, because he _is_ a normal person after all. He’s not doing anything wrong. He’s allowed to buy snacks in motorway service stations (despite the restraining order taken out against him by the entire staff of the Clacket Lane services in Kent). He’s not breaking any laws, no one is hunting him down for anything that he’s aware of, and there are no paratroopers en route to smash through the ceiling creating untold numbers of civilian casualties in a desperate, against-the-clock search for the most wanted man in Glasgow (at least, not outside of Jamie’s daydreams).

 

He feels wrong, though, and he’s convinced everyone else can see it. A couple of lorry drivers in jeans and thick hoodies ignore him in what he feels is a very specific way as he reaches past them to pick up a couple of bottles of Coke, which he balances carefully on top of the heap. He adds a hot sausage roll and a steak bake from the heated display, and just about manages to balance the whole lot over to the counter, where he also picks up a packet of mints and a Sudoku book. The girl starts bagging up his stuff, giving him a slightly raised eyebrow as he rocks on the balls of his feet. He knew it – they can all tell. He doesn’t know how – maybe the entire human race except for him has developed some Doctor Who-esque hive mind – but the whole population of the UK now knows who he is, what he’s doing, where he’s just been and where he’s going to now. He’s drawing attention like a granny in a tattoo parlour, for which he vows to eternally curse the name of Samantha Cassidy.

 

The call from Sam came two days ago, which didn’t allow him enough time to start freaking out, but did give him just enough time to really begin to dwell on things. She knew, somehow – and he’d very much like to know _how the fuck_ , but, later – that he was in London visiting his sister. And he supposes that was his own fault, the timing there, but damn the sneaky wee cow for taking advantage of it, and anyway, it was the twins’ birthday so why _shouldn’t_ he visit?

 

Sam wanted to meet up, and he agreed because he liked her ( _liked_ , past tense), and it was nice to see her again, it really was. She chose a crowded Starbucks near Covent Garden, tourists everywhere, noise and movement, lights reflecting off damp slate and cobble, a much better place for a private conversation than somewhere calm and quiet where _anyone_ could hear what you were saying. Sam arrived first, in a woollen dress and knee-high boots, and she had Jamie’s long black with six sugars waiting for him seconds before he joined her at the table.

 

“Old habits,” she said, hugging him, though Jamie doesn’t remember her ever fetching coffee for him before. She was warm and smelled of rain and London, and there _is_ a smell, he’d forgotten it after so many years of living there. Metallic and earthy, not unpleasant. He wondered if he smelled to her like Glasgow, and whether that’s any better or worse.

 

They sat and chatted, Sam with her hands wrapped around a huge mug of cream-topped hot chocolate, Jamie taking big gulps of still-steaming coffee, condensation forming on the window beside them and fuzzing out the city, turning it into vague suggestions of colour and movement. She asked him how his family enjoyed having him back, and he said he thought they did, at least his mum did, everyone else seemed to be pretending he’d never left at all. He asked her how her new job was going, but she just looked a little surprised, a tiny bit annoyed, and changed the subject – told him instead about her new boyfriend, Mark, an actual, honest-to-god fireman. Uniform and running into burning buildings and everything.

 

“He’s very brave,” she said, as if expecting him to refute that.

 

“He’d have to be,” said Jamie, thinking of something other than flames and smoke.

 

“He’s saved people’s lives.”

 

Jamie nodded, doing his best impressed face. “Wow. Does he carry you around? Like, a fireman’s carry?”

 

“Sometimes, if I ask him to.”

 

“Nice big shoulder right where you want it, eh? Could he carry me around?”

 

“He could bundle you out of an eighth-floor window if you like.”

 

The conversation wound down after a while, which happens often between them, but it never matters at all. It’s the comfortable silence of old friends. Jamie broke it with the odd observation ( _“Look at that fuckwit in a suit and tie ordering a fucking milkshake with whipped cream and fucking sprinkles”_ ) and Sam, despite Jamie trying to shove a tenner into her purse, got them another couple of drinks.

 

“So Jamie,” said Sam, quite suddenly, “when are you going home?”

 

“Tomorrow.”

 

“Oh. Uh-huh. I suppose you want to be gone before…?”

 

“Yep,” he said. He wasn’t entirely sure if she flinched, but it was something like it.

 

Sam sat and fidgeted with her mug, scratching at the printed logo with a long fingernail. Uneasy, almost nervous. There was a Friday, years ago, a Friday night when Jamie had put in almost three solid weeks, working through weekends, easily doing twelve-hour days though he hadn’t been counting. Even Malcolm went home by twelve on Sundays, but at the time there had just been too much paperwork, too much to chase up, and no one Jamie trusted enough to delegate to. Eventually Sam appeared at Jamie’s desk with the message that he was to fuck off home or be fired. He’ll always remember the odd expression on her face when sent to sort-of punish him for doing nothing wrong, and she was wearing it again here, in Starbucks, on a damp Monday afternoon.

 

“I need to ask you something,” she said. “ _We_ need to ask you something.”

 

Jamie grinned. “You and Mark? Threesome? _Knew_ it. Always knew you fancied me -”

 

“Jamie -”

 

“I mean sure, I’d love to. Just tell me when, where, and what flavour lube to bring.”

 

“Jamie!”

 

Her expression suggested she did not want to have sex with him.

 

“No threesome?”

 

“No threesome. Listen, Jamie… I haven’t _got_ a new job.”

 

“Oh.” He put down his coffee mug and found himself wearing his somewhat alarming, seldom-used sympathetic expression. “Well, I’ll definitely help if I can, but look, there must be much better people to lend you money. I haven’t got much, but what I have, though, Sammy, it’s yours, okay?”

 

She flapped her hands at him. “No, no, no. I don’t… I mean, that’s very sweet of you, Jamie, but could you please stop jumping to conclusions for one minute? What I _meant_ was, I’m still doing my old job.”

 

Jamie scowls. “You’re working for Oliver couldn’t-find-his-own-bollocks-with-satnav Reeder?”

 

“What did I just say?”

 

“Something about jumping?”

 

“I’m still Malcolm’s PA.”

 

Jamie snorted. “Okay. Cushy job, eh? Can’t be much for you to do. What happens, do you march up to the door every morning with his fucking gingerbread latte and get strip-searched before they’ll let you take it in? Do they scan it in case you’ve hidden a power tool in it? Because they should. You ought to suggest that. Bit late now though.”

 

Sam pursed her lips, and he hated her for it, because she was reading him like he was being projected onto the side of the British Museum after dark. She could probably tell he hadn’t been sleeping well, hadn’t… hadn’t been entirely what you might call sane for the last couple of weeks (by his _own standards_ of sanity, he was reminded by one of his thought-wasps before it collided into his amygdala and knocked itself out). He’s still having those fucking _weird_ dreams (he’s started getting one involving a dinosaur looking into his bedroom window) and that’s only when he can get any sleep, pills don’t seem to help much, and then there’s the _nerves_ like he’s never known before except when on a plane or at the dentist, and it’s been hell hiding all that from everyone, but Sam – Sam looks at him like she can see everything written on his face in big crayon letters. She probably can, too.

 

“You could stay an extra day,” said Sam, as if she’d rehearsed it.

 

“What for? I leave tomorrow. He doesn’t get out until Friday.”

 

“Actually, no, that’s just what we’ve told the papers. You know him, Jamie, he doesn’t want to be the story. No photos, no reporters, nothing. He’s actually being released on the 10th, we’ve just told everyone it’s the 12th. I don’t know how he got that past his lawyer, but he did. You _know_ him. He probably had something on them or… the point is, the cameras will be there on Friday, but he’ll be long gone by then.”

 

“They’ll be watching his house already. Where are you stashing him?”

 

Sam coughed, took a sip of her hot chocolate. “I’m not.”

 

“But he can’t-“

 

“Malcolm asked me to give you a message.” Her face was beginning to flush, nothing at all to do with the heat of her drink or the press of people around them. Jamie had never really spoken to her about The Thing, not since she admitted she knew, but if it ever came up, as it occasionally did between them as friends – if he had no real excuse why he couldn’t meet her down the pub, or arrived at work late wearing yesterday’s suit – she always went a bit pink around the edges. He’s never quite figured out what’s going on between Malcolm and Sam – they’re not _exactly_ friends, but Sam really, really should have moved on and found another job, a better job, a fucking _sane_ job, now that Malcolm’s where he was always destined to end his career. He suspects the closest comparison is between a stern Victorian gentleman and his partially-acknowledged and secretly adored illegitimate daughter.

 

“Why couldn’t he give me a message his own fucking self?”

 

Sam’s eyes widened, and Jamie realised he’d barked that out quite loudly. The hipster at the next table was glaring at him as if he’d spoiled the sanctity of Starbucks by swearing emotionally rather than just ironically.

 

“I mean, he knows where I fucking live. He could have written.”

 

“Well. I know you wrote to him once, but-”

 

“No reply,” Jamie told the bottom of his coffee mug.

 

“He couldn’t…”

 

“He fucking could, if he’d fucking wanted.”

 

“It’s not been easy for him.” Sam reached out to squeeze Jamie’s arm, and he let her for a moment before tugging it away. “He’s tired, Jamie… he’s got good reason to avoid the press. He’s been seeing doctors in there-“

 

“What? Why? Is he-?”

 

“Nothing like that – he’s been hardly able to sleep.”

 

“He’s never been able to sleep more than four hours on the go. What’s changed?”

 

“I don’t know.” Sam was pink again. “I only get to see him once a week. I take him his post if I can’t deal with it myself, that sort of thing. He doesn’t say much. Asks after people sometimes, gives me things to do – the house, mainly, and his mum, I make sure she’s all right, see if she needs anything, you know… But look, this message. I’m to tell you he’s changed his mind and he should have said ‘ _yes’_. Um. Should I start hat shopping, or…?”

 

Jamie hacked up a dark laugh. His fingers twitched with the sudden craving for a smoke. “I tried to get him tae come to Glasgow with me.”

 

“Huh. He’s right, then, he _should_ have said yes.”

 

“He never would’ve.”

 

“No.”

 

“So?”

 

“You need to be subtle. Don’t tell anyone, obviously, make up some excuse why you’re staying longer, and don’t let anyone see him until it’s all over with.”

 

“Do I get a fucking say in this?”

 

Sam looked pained, shrugging one shoulder. “If you don’t want to…”

 

“Nothing’s changed, has it? Thinks he can just snap his fingers and I’ll come running to lick his face and hump his leg.”

 

“He needs you.”

 

“Get tae fuck, Sammy. He doesn’t _need_ … I don’t want him to fucking _need_ …”

 

“It’s all been wrong since you left. Look, if you won’t pick him up then I’ll figure something out myself, but he’s asked for you.”

 

And that’s how Jamie ends up at the northbound services at Strensham, carrying two shopping bags full of food as he jogs through the rain back to his car. He throws most of the food onto the back seat next to the thick blue folder Sam gave him before they parted ways. It contains her plans for the next few days, to be passed on to Malcolm. Jamie stuffs two bags of crisps and a bottle of Coke into the compartment behind the handbrake as he gets in and starts the engine.

 

Malcolm is still there, in the front passenger seat, fast asleep. His head is resting against the window, pillowed by Jamie’s balled-up fleece. He looks like shit, but he looks forty-five minutes’ worth of sleep less shit than he did when he came through the doors of HMP Leyhill. It wasn’t much of a reunion. Malcolm darted into the car before anybody could see him, and Jamie sped away as if he was driving a getaway vehicle (which he sort of was, only eighteen months too late). Malcolm sat there and stared at him for several minutes, as though making sure it really was him and not a reporter or a Tory wearing a Jamie MacDonald mask, while Jamie made a big deal of concentrating on the road.

 

The only thing Malcolm said before he dozed off was, “I expected Sam,” which both breaks Jamie’s heart and makes him want to break Malcolm’s skull at the same time.

 

“Daft auld cunt,” he mutters, glaring at Malcolm as he stuffs the crisps into his mouth. There’s time for a very quick smoke, and then they’re off again.

 

It’s a fuck of a long drive, but public transport is out of the question. Sam made him promise. And he has to behave, no speeding, no cutting in, which is just fucking _restrictive_ , but the entire point of the operation is to get Malcolm somewhere safe before anyone realises they need to look for him. Jamie puts the radio on as he pulls out of the services and back onto the M5, but he’d forgotten that Fearne Cotton’s voice makes his brain bleed, so he switches to CD, trying to drown out the sound of the rain battering the roof by humming along.

 

_“I’m sitting on top of the world, just rolling along, just rolling along…”_

 

Malcolm doesn’t stir, not even when Jamie swerves in an attempt to cut off a P-plate from getting to the fast lane, earning the honking admonitions of the drivers around them. He’s supposed to keep them under the radar, so he doesn’t honk back, but he does try and get around an obnoxious Nissan Micra driver who appears to be so in love with 60mph she can’t bear to cheat on it and have a fling with 70. In fact, Malcolm barely appears to be breathing until an hour-and-a-half later, when his eyes snap open like something out of a silent movie.

 

“There’s food in the back,” Jamie tells him, eyes still fixed on the road.

 

Malcolm takes his seatbelt off and gropes around on the back seat until he comes up with a sausage roll. He sniffs it suspiciously before taking a bite.

 

“Where are we?”

 

Jamie glances at a road sign as it flashes past. “Somewhere near Stoke-On-Trent.”

 

Malcolm processes this with the solemnity of anyone approaching Stoke-On-Trent. He sniffs the sausage roll again. “This is awful.”

 

“Ach, well, my _apologies_ , they’d sold out of foie gras and the venison looked a bit fucking stringy tae me.”

 

“Is there any fruit?”

 

“Yeah, there’s Fanta and Hula Hoops.”

 

Malcolm makes a face, then pulls the entire shopping bag over and drops it in the footwell while he rummages around. Jamie can’t help watching out of the corner of his eye as Malcolm eats two chocolate bars one after the other, then slumps back against the window.

 

“We need to stop and get some proper food. How the fuck are you still alive?”

 

“Nope. Gotta make the border before dark.”

 

“What for?”

 

“That’s the plan. It’s my plan. I made a plan, and it’s what we’re doing.” Jamie veers them into the fast lane and puts his foot down as they speed past the junction. “You expected Sam, eh?”

 

Malcolm shrugs. “Figured asking you was worth a shot, but… Look, can’t you just find an Asda and get me some fucking bananas or something? I just want to eat something that hasn’t come out of a sack. You have no fucking _idea_ , son-“

 

“Yeah, yeah, try that line when you’ve done time in Barlinnie in the late eighties, then we can chat about our favourite consistency of mystery meat. Look, just sit tight and we’ll stop when I say we’ll stop, okay?”

 

Malcolm eats another Mars Bar out of some ineffectual form of protest, and by the time they’re swinging round the Manchester ring road he’s asleep again. Jamie turns the heating on as the afternoon draws on, but it’s working erratically, and he finds himself trying to one-handily spread his fleece across Malcolm’s lap to keep him warm. Malcolm stirs, his eyes blink open, and he semi-consciously squeezes Jamie’s fingers before drifting off again. Jamie pats him on the knee and drives on.

 

Somewhere near Kendal, as the sun is going down, Sam calls Jamie’s phone.

 

“Hey, pet. The kittens are in the sack.”

 

“Jamie? I was going to leave a message. Aren’t you _driving_ right now?”

 

“Aye.”

 

“It’s ‘cat in the basket’, not… is he okay?”

 

“He’s sleeping. It’s all the auld fuck’s done.”

 

“Well, that’s good. How far out are you?”

 

“Uh… sign here says Windermere, whateverthefuck one of those is.”

 

“Did you look at the folder? It contains the address and phone number for Megan Tucker – Malcolm’s sister.”

 

“Right, okay– wait, isn’t she Megan… M-something? Matthews? Morrison?”

 

“Not any more. You’re out of the loop, MacDonald.”

 

“Christ. Okay.”

 

“She’s the only other person who knows it’s today, I’m going to call her now, she’ll be expecting you. You can take him to that address. You ever met her?”

 

“No.”

 

“Me neither. Apparently she’s mostly normal. Just don’t mention the ex-husband, I’ve heard it was a nasty split.”

 

Jamie glances at Malcolm and tries to imagine the woman who crawled from the same gene pool as him. He shivers, turns his mind to something else. “How’s Mark?”

 

“Piss off.”

 

“Defensive, eh?”

 

“You’re not stealing my boyfriend. Get off the phone, focus on the road. Give Malcolm a hug from me, will you?”

 

“Only if you’ll lick Mark’s bumhole from me.”

 

Sam makes a noise between a snort of disgust and a laugh, and hangs up on him.

 

Malcolm’s still sleeping, but Jamie pulls into a Sainsbury’s service station and buys three bananas, a bag of apples, and a couple of bottles of water. He tops up the tank, then parks near a grass verge where he stretches his legs and smokes a couple of roll-ups in quick succession, before checking his phone. There’s a message from Cam ( _where the fuck r u?_ ) and a couple of emails. He ignores everything and opens the passenger side door to prod Malcolm in the shoulder until he wakes up.

 

“What?” he snaps.

 

“Got some fruit. There’s a picnic table over there. Thought we could have a wee break before we reach the border.”

 

Malcolm makes a grumbly sound that anyone else would take for a protest, but Jamie knows him well enough to hear the relief in his tone as he stretches a leg out of the car and rubs some life back into it.

 

“Fucking cramp,” Malcolm growls. Jamie leaves him to it. He goes around to the back seat and fishes out the bag of fruit and Sam’s folder. When he straightens up, Malcolm’s standing behind him, smirking, as Jamie occasionally caught him doing in a previous life. Jamie chucks the bag at him.

 

“I could drive the last leg,” Malcolm offers as they walk over to the table. He’s still stiff-legged, but Jamie pretends he hasn’t noticed.

 

“You can’t drive,” Jamie points out.

 

“I read a book about it, a couple of months ago.”

 

“Uh-huh.” Jamie drops Sam’s folder on the table. “You’re not driving, cockweasel. You can study this instead.”

 

Malcolm’s great skill is multi-tasking, and even watching him, Jamie can’t figure out how he manages to peel a banana and spread the contents of Sam’s folder out across the table at the same time. The noise of the motorway filters through a few scraggly trees, and off to Jamie’s left is a steep bank down to a river, which rushes and gurgles. The noise helps him feel shielded from the world, but the breeze still cuts through the grassy space, and he has to place his wallet, watch, and keys on the table as impromptu paperweights.

 

Sam has put a lot of effort into this. It’s her plan for transitioning Malcolm back into the world with the minimum of fuss and bother, and she’s gone ahead and shown them her work. There are print-outs of emails between her and several newspaper editors, independent journalists, and a couple of prolific bloggers, there are train timetables and map routes, there’s a hotel reservation confirmation email pinned to her correspondence with the editor of the _Scotsman_ , and there’s a laminated – _laminated_ , Jamie can’t get over it – cover letter for the whole pack, addressed to _Malcolm and Jamie_ as if they come as a set (as if she _fucking knew_ he wouldn’t say no), featuring a timetable and highlights from the emails. Jamie also finds a printout with his name written on the top in Sam’s neat handwriting, suggesting a couple of B &Bs near Megan Tucker’s house, but there’s no reservation made on his behalf. That’s a hint and a half. Sam knows he lives just south of the river, but apparently she wants him closer.

 

Sam’s plan is, despite evidence to the contrary, flawlessly simple. Malcolm lays low with his sister until Friday, when the rest of the world believes he’s being released from prison. On Friday morning, while the on-scene reporters are wallowing in confusion and being asked by irritated prison staff to kindly _move on_ , Malcolm will be on his way to speak to a couple of senior political reporters in Edinburgh, who will be expecting a _representative of Mr Tucker_ with a statement. Malcolm will then have the opportunity to say whatever he wants in private, without two dozen camera flashes going off in his face. He’ll be away and checked into the hotel before the story hits the first screen. Sam has arranged for a couple of interviews that afternoon, at the hotel, where she suggests they (‘you both’) stay until Malcolm has become yesterday’s news.

 

“Why have I got to stay at this snobby joint?” Jamie demands, jabbing at the plan with an angry finger.

 

Malcolm shrugs. With one long hand, he flaps Jamie’s paw away and gathers up all the paperwork, putting it carefully back into its folder. He already looks tired again, despite his ridiculous offer to drive, but he leans back on the bench, trying to get comfortable. Jamie lights a cigarette, and, to his surprise, Malcolm makes a little gesture asking for a go at it.

 

“Do ye even have the lung capacity of a four-year-old with terminal consumption?” Jamie asks, but passes the fag over anyway. Malcolm takes a cautious drag, coughs a little, and hands the cigarette back across the table.

 

“What next?” Jamie asks. “You gonnae start drinking again?”

 

“Who knows.” Malcolm is studying him, eyes narrowed against the setting sun.

 

Jamie makes a face at him. “What?”

 

“Nothing. Have you… I mean, listen, how are you? How’ve you been?”

 

“Fine. Why?”

 

“ _Why_?” Malcolm shrugs, appears to take it as a serious question. He snatches the cigarette off Jamie again. “That’s what people ask each other.”

 

“Are we people now?”

 

“Well, I dunno about _you_ … I’m being, y’know, polite. No, fuck that, I’m genuinely asking. What’re you doing? Who’re you seeing? How’s… life?”

 

Jamie shifts uncomfortably on the bench. Malcolm’s never asked him how he is before, but that’s probably because Jamie has no qualms about announcing his emotions, opinions, and any physical sensations he may be experiencing, from mild thirst to extreme horniness, out loud to the entire room. Even when his mouth’s not moving, Malcolm’s always known how he is. He’s never _had_ to ask before.

 

“Uh. I’m working – writing. Freelance for the moment. Thinking of…” he hesitates. He hasn’t told anyone this, but this is exactly the sort of thing he’d normally run past Malcolm for a reaction before anybody else. Anyway, what does it matter? “I’m thinking of trying fiction. You know, a novel.”

 

“What about?”

 

Jamie shrugs uneasily, taps another fag out and offers Malcolm the packet. He takes one, and the lighter, and Jamie finds himself biting down on both his lips. He’d forgotten how elegantly Malcolm’s hands move when he’s lighting a cigarette; he quit, apparently for good, not long after they met.

 

“Dunno exactly. A thriller. I have a few ideas.”

 

Malcolm nods. “Great,” he says. “That’s great. With an imagination as rampant and fucked-up as yours, you’ll make a fortune.”

 

“That’s the plan.”

 

“Yeah, well, remember your old mates, eh?”

 

“I’ll get you intae the premier when they make the movie version, how about that?”

 

Malcolm gazes off into the trees, chewing his lip in thought. Eventually, he says, “Lizzy, isn’t it?”

 

“Who?”

 

“Your bird. Lives next door to your brother. You went on about her for a solid fucking week.”

 

“ _Liza_? What about her?”

 

Another of those incredibly unconvincing shrugs. “How is she?”

 

“I wouldnae have a fucking clue. She moved tae Dundee years back. Why the fuck would you ask after her?”

 

It’s a dumb question he doesn’t really want an answer to, but he remembers coming home from Glasgow and fuelling the gossip about his alleged fuckfest of a holiday. He’d done that _for Malcolm_ , for fuck’s sake, to steer any speculation away from them like the big twat wanted him to.

 

“So who…?” Malcolm asks, then, judging by the cat-licking-a-grapefruit look on his face, wishes he could retract the entire line of enquiry. Jamie is more than happy to pretend a passing lorry had completely deafened him to the sound of Malcolm’s voice.

 

Silence reigns between them, with Malcolm nibbling at an apple, and Jamie employing the most obscene techniques imaginable to eat a banana. Malcolm gives him a little sneer of unconvincing disgust, and gets up to stretch his legs before they begin the final drive home.

 

A road sign approaches as the sun is setting. They’ve gone past hundreds of similar signs marking the routes to hundreds of different towns and cities the entire length of the west coast, but Malcolm takes an interest in this one. He shifts in his seat, getting a better view.

 

“Stirling,” he says.

 

“What?” says Jamie. “Stirling? What about it?”

 

“I’ve never been there.”

 

“You’ve never been to Stirling?”

 

Malcolm shrugs. “Been through it. Never stopped.”

 

Jamie watches the blue and white road sign approach. It says _M8 Glasgow (City Centre)_ on one side, and _Sterling (A80)_ on the other. The junction isn’t far ahead. Jamie’s tired of driving, but he feels a little restless too, possibly prompted by Malcolm sitting forward in his seat and looking keenly out at the road ahead.

 

Another sign flicks past; _Welcome To Glasgow_.

 

“Mebby one day you can go tae fucking Sterling. Live the dream, eh?”

 

Malcolm slumps back in his seat and Jamie can feel his gaze boring into the side of his head.

 

“We could go there now,” Malcolm says. Jamie recognises that tone. It’s his _testing the ground_ tone, previously used on new ministers to discover whether they were the sort to crumple up and cry, or try and back-chat him. Except this version is considerably more cautious. Jamie’s reactions have always been somewhat more extreme than mere back-chat.

 

Jamie glances briefly across. Malcolm is gripping Sam’s folder, his knuckles white, fingers denting the cardboard. All those carefully worded emails, those cautious meetings, those reservations and schedules and instructions. Malcolm never did do very well with instructions.

 

Wordlessly, Jamie merges into the right-hand lane. A few minutes later they’re driving northbound on the M80. Neither of them says anything, but Malcolm shoves Sam’s folder unceremoniously into the glove box, and forces it shut with his knee.

 

They’re actually on the far side of Dunblane by the time Jamie identifies a B&B he thinks Malcolm will put up with, and which has a vacancy sign out the front. It’s dark, moonless, and foggy, with heavy clouds massing on the horizon, which is fine. He’ll have to assume anyone they meet will recognise Malcolm. The man’s not what you’d call a fucking _celebrity_ , but anyone who reads a newspaper at least once a week will have seen his face beneath provocative headlines, and there’s already been a couple of items on TV – last week’s _Have I Got News For You_ had featured wee Henry Ross, a baby minister Jamie never had the pleasure of gnawing on, nervously joking that Malcolm’s impending release was like watching a big, winged shadow expanding around you and not being able to run or hide, which makes a lot of sense seeing as Henry Ross is clearly a fucking _plague rat_ and deserves to be swooped by something with talons.

 

Jamie gives Malcolm the room key and his holdall from the boot, then takes his own going-away bag into the little guest laundry on the ground floor, near the bins. He only packed for a couple of days, and Malcolm can always somehow _tell_ when he tries to reuse the same pair of pants.

 

Not that he gives a fuck what Malcolm thinks. Obviously.

 

As the dryer tumbles, Jamie smokes his second-to-last cigarette on the dark patio and tries very hard not to _think_ about anything. The beep of someone’s phone in a guestroom above him reminds him of the text from his brother that he ignored, so he sends back a reply, _staying a bit longer_ , then paces restlessly in the chilly evening of the little garden until the machine clunks to a halt. He shoves all his clothes unceremoniously back into the bag.

 

When he gets up to their room, Malcolm is out cold again, still fully dressed and sprawled on his side on the bed nearest the door. Jamie flounders for a moment, then pulls a spare blanket from the wardrobe and drops it on him, then when he’s half-way to the bathroom he curses himself, goes back, and spreads the blanket out carefully over the stupid auld twat, unties his laces and chucks his shoes in the corner. Once he’s showered, Jamie heads to the bar downstairs, where they’ve just finished serving food, but the middle-aged woman behind the counter reluctantly brings him a bowl of nearly-cold chips. He wraps half of them in a napkin and takes them upstairs, in case Malcolm wakes up hungry.

 

It’s getting late. Jamie lies on the bed near the window and watches, through the crack in the curtains, the clouds scudding across the moon. A few specks of rain flick against the glass, he can hear the faint patter of it on the roof, and the sound lulls him, exhausted on levels he can’t examine yet, towards sleep – though not quite into it. He’s aware of the movement of people in the rooms above and beside theirs, the shuffle of feet on the solid oak floors, the distant hum of conversation. After a while, there’s lightning, far in the distance. Jamie reaches out and tugs the curtains to close the gap and complete the darkness.

 

Somewhere in the early hours of the morning, there’s a sound from the other bed. Malcolm stirs and gets up, stretching his limbs like a cat that’s been in a carrier all day and is almost as pissed off about it as he’s happy to be free. Jamie lies very still, pretending to be asleep for the same unknown, but no doubt utterly moronic reason he always pretended to be asleep as a child when his mam came to check on him. Through his eyelashes, he watches Malcolm rummage in his holdall until he’s found shorts and a soft shirt. He undresses, folding his clothes carefully into the holdall, then picks up the fresh clothes and pads towards the bathroom, pausing briefly half-way across the room. Then he moves again, closes the bathroom door behind him, and light illuminates the cracks around the doorframe.

 

Jamie exhales.

 

 

The rain intensifies, pattering on the cars and plastic bins in the street below. Jamie twitches the curtain aside as a thunderclap builds, low and threatening, then reaches a spine-tingling crescendo that rattles the window glass. The moon’s completely hidden behind the clouds now, the storm rolling down from the distant hills, bringing with it fresh, clean, cool air. Jamie shivers, drops the curtain, and gathers the thin sheets around him as much as possible, nuzzling into the pillow and trying to clear his mind enough to actually get to sleep.

 

Eventually, the sounds of running water stop, and moments later the bathroom door opens. Malcolm pads back across the floor, pausing when a deep boom of thunder makes the entire room tremble. Jamie shivers violently, his teeth chattering louder than gunfire in his head.

 

The mattress dips as Malcolm apparently decides his own bed isn’t good enough for him and that he has to colonise Jamie’s instead. It’s an invasion on several significant fronts, but Jamie’s guard is still very much on full, sleep-deprived, adrenaline fuelled alert. Bayonets ready and best foot forwards.

 

“Fuck off,” Jamie mumbles.

 

But Malcolm’s brought with him a game changer in the form of the spare blanket. Jamie snatches as much of it as he can and cocoons himself in it, and allows Malcolm to wrap himself in the rest. They lie there back-to-back, Jamie’s shivering easing off until he shifts and accidentally brushes his leg against Malcolm’s ice-cold foot.

 

_Fuck fuck fuck._

 

“Oi.” He nudges Malcolm in the ribs as he disentangles himself from the eighty percent of the blanket he’d claimed, and offers some of it over. Some form of linen-centric compromise is eventually reached, and, the worst of the chill banished for now, Jamie manages to get some sleep.

 

When he wakes up to sunlight creeping through the curtains, Malcolm is gone. At first he takes this on board as normal, but seconds later the panic sets in.

 

“Shit!” he yelps, sitting bolt upright. Malcolm can’t just _wander off_ , he’ll be _recognised_ , and then they’ll be _hounded_ , and Sam will be even more frustrated with them than she’s going to be anyway...

 

“Breakfast,” says Malcolm, glancing at him. He’s sitting upright at the foot of the other bed, a tray in front of him. Jamie’s stomach rumbles on simply hearing that word, so he untangles himself from the blankets and stumbles over to inspect the contents of the tray. Malcolm appears to have brought up half a loaf of bread, sliced and toasted, and somehow gleaned several flavours of jam and marmalade from the kitchen.

 

“Marmite?” Jamie asks. Malcolm nudges the world’s smallest portion of the stuff towards him, and Jamie tucks in.

 

Malcolm’s got a road atlas spread out on the bed beside him. He’s poring over it and drinking coffee and his expression is calm and alert and Jamie can’t stop looking at him.

 

“I’ve never,” says Malcolm, “really been to Perth either. I want to see what’s in Perth. See if they’ve also got a shitty B&B with fucking straw-mattress beds and no duvets.”

 

Jamie swallows his mouthful of toast, wipes a bit of marmite off his lip. Malcolm’s gaze flicks up to him, then away again, back to the atlas. Jamie snatches it, drags the heavy book across the bed and examines it for a moment. He flicks forward a few pages, then shrugs, chucks the atlas back at Malcolm, who narrows his eyes, ready to fight if that’s what Jamie wants.

 

There’s approximately thirty thousand things he wants to say to Malcolm, and another few things he’d quite like to hear back, but for the first time in more years than Jamie cares to think about, they’re on exactly the same wavelength. Malcolm might want to be coy about it, but Jamie can’t be fucking arsed; they need to get as far the fuck away from London, from Glasgow, from the questions and the cameras and the fucking _parasites_ as possible, with nothing but a couple of changes of clothes and Jamie’s sister’s battered old Cavalier with the one back door that doesn’t open and its reluctance to run the windscreen wipers and the heater at the same time.

 

“Have you,” says Jamie, reaching for another piece of toast, “ever been to Thurso?”

 

 **Thursday**  

 

Megan Tucker settles down on her sofa with a fresh mug of tea, her alligator slippers on her feet, and the TV remote in hand. All three kids have been disposed of for the week, one to her mum, one to a friend, and the eldest is probably having a miserable time at his girlfriend’s puritanically strict parents’ house. None of them have a clue their Uncle Malcolm was supposed to be coming to stay, which is extra fine seeing as he hasn’t put in an appearance yet, nearly 24 hours after she expected him. (And mum doesn’t know either – must remember to remind Malcolm not to let slip, the old biddy turns brutal when she catches her offspring _keeping things_ from her.)

 

Megan flicks through the channels looking for something interesting to watch. It’s not often she gets the telly to herself _and_ the peace to enjoy it.

 

She knows better than to worry about her stupid big brother, not least because she grew up with him and arguably knows the real Malcolm Tucker, the man that might still just about exist somewhere deep inside the politician, better than anybody else. Not hearing from Malcolm is a sign that either he’s busy or he’s dead, and if it’s the latter there’s not exactly anything she can do about it, is there? But this time, she’s doubly reassured by the email she got from Sam (what a sweet lass) yesterday, letting her know that Malcolm would be picked up by a former employee and friend, Jamie McDonald – written as though Megan doesn’t know that name. Of course, she officially doesn’t. She’s never broken her brother’s confidence, and never will, unless, of course, he breaks hers first – then all rules are off.

 

It’s a name she hasn’t heard in a while. Then again, Malcolm hasn’t spoken to her in a long time, not properly, not like he used to. His letters from prison were written as though he expected MI6 to intercept them, each containing nothing more interesting than the projects they had him working on – gardening, bird rearing, painting… she was glad to hear he’s painting again, even if it took eighteen months at her Majesty’s Pleasure to get him to pick up a fucking brush, the talent-squandering old git, she’s always been so _jealous_ … But nothing personal. Nothing he wouldn’t also be telling friends, employees, lawyers, or anybody else. Even before the conviction, before that big inquiry that caused all the trouble, even then he was quiet. _Nothing to report_ , he’d tell her on the phone when she was lucky enough to have her calls answered. She’d tell him about the kids, and how the divorce was coming along, the latest fights with Howard, and she’s always told him if she’s seeing someone, but he’s not been sharing anything with her lately.

 

She misses the old days, when _he_ used to call _her_ at fuck-off o’clock in the morning just to get something out of his head so he had a fighting chance at sleep. He’s always trusted her with whatever’s going on in his life, in his head, ever since she was ten years old and he’d had to sit her down and explained she could _not tell anyone_ what she’d just caught him doing with his friend Neil from school. _Ever_ , he’d said, _not even mum_ , and for a while she’d assumed it was A Bad Thing and worried about him, but eventually she realised it was really just Malcolm’s intense dislike of people gossiping about him. When she was older, she became the person he could talk to, when he needed to, and likewise he always had an ear for her.

 

She hates to think how much he might have bottled up, how repressed he might be now, if she hadn’t barged into the wrong room at the wrong moment. She’s missed those conversations sorely. How Malcolm couldn’t _stand_ to initiate them but would anyway, sidling up to her sort of sideways and making a pained face, or ringing in the middle of the night, apologising and hanging up, forcing her to call back and prove she had time for him. It worked both ways, though, always had – she’d actually started off the first real heart-to-heart when she was fifteen by breaking into his flat while he was out, and sobbing into one of his stupid _eggshell blue_ sofa cushions until he came home from work and she could launch into a tearful monologue about how she’d slept with her boyfriend and she thought she wanted to but now she wished she hadn’t done it at all, and was she supposed to feel sick after? He gave her the bollocking of a lifetime for breaking in, then gave her one of his t-shirts to wear as a nightdress, brought them both a blanket each to wrap up in, called mum to tell her she was sleeping over, and cracked out the vodka. He kept it light-hearted and reassuring, but around two a.m. he gave her that steely look she’s since seen on the news, and asked if she’d considered becoming a lesbian because _all men_ are _absolute fucking bastards_.

 

She misses him keenly, she _does_ , but she’s not worried. She remembers the first time she heard Malcolm mention Jamie, remembers noticing the little jaw clench that meant he was supressing a smile. Something about Malcolm’s new employee eating the editor of the _Mirror_ for breakfast and cleaning his teeth with a splintered ulna on his first week at the job. Impressed the fuck out of Malcolm, Megan could tell that much, and then, later, after the election when she’d expected to hear him drunk and exuberant at her down the phone, he’d actually called to say _I might have made an extremely fucking_ big _mistake last night, kiddo…_

 

 _Simple solution_ , she’d told him, attempting to thread Danny’s costume for the school play through a sewing machine borrowed from Helen next door, with the phone clamped between her ear and shoulder, _c’mon_ , _you know what to do. Shag him again when you’re both sober, see if it still feels like a mistake_.

 

 _And what_ , he’d asked, _the fuck do you suggest I do if it doesn’t?_

_I dunno. Close your eyes, keep on doing it, and never, ever talk about it? That’s what I do._

That conversation feels like a long time ago, now, a veritable lifetime ago. There eventually came a point when she figured Jamie was a permanent, if secretive fixture, even through Malcolm’s ridiculous attempts at heterosexuality, even with their godawful jobs that she prefers to know little about. A few Christmases ago she considered inviting them both up, except that Malcolm stopped properly speaking to her, and then… well, then everything seemed to unravel for him. And apparently Jamie was gone.

 

She’s got his number programmed into her phone because Sam gave it to her, and she doesn’t want to ignore any calls as they make their way home. But she doesn’t expect to actually hear from him, which is why, when her phone trills and _Jamie McD_ comes up on the screen, she side-eyes the device for a moment before sighing, pausing the drama she found on iPlayer, and checking the text, which looks as though it’s been written one-handed, possibly while driving.

 

_Hi Megan this is Jamie Malcolms friend. Sorry 4 lack of contact. He is fine will call soon sorry_

 

“Twats,” Megan mutters, sipping her tea, and goes back to her programme.

**   **Friday** **

 

It’s a text message that wakes Sam just before six a.m.

 

She can hear Mark moving around downstairs. He’s always so quiet and careful when he gets back off a night shift, even when he’s had a rough time of it, even that time he came back from the hospital with instructions to take three days’ rest for smoke inhalation. As soon as she’s awake, though, she tunes into the creak of the floorboards beneath his feet, the tiny sounds of him making tea, slicing bread, flicking light switches, all the hundred thousand little signals of another life, another person, comfortable and at home in her house. He’ll be up to bed soon, and she doesn’t have to go anywhere for a while yet. Malcolm’s alleged release is at ten. Heaps of time.

 

She reaches out a hand, yawning into her pillow, and gropes around on the bedside table until she gets hold of the phone, pushing herself up with her other arm. She switches off the alarm function seconds before it sounds, then checks the message.

 

It’s from Jamie. All it says is _Sorry. Don’t worry. Sorry._

 

Sam stares at it for a few moments, then rolls her eyes back in her head, throws the phone down on the sheets, and drops back against the pillows.

 

“What was that about?” Mark’s in the doorway, giving her a bemused look. She huffs a little sigh.

 

“I think I’m going to be in very high demand today. I _think_ Malcolm’s done a runner.”

 

“Is that bad?”

 

He gets into bed beside her, annoyingly without taking his shorts off. She scoots closer with the intention of helping him with that.

 

“For him? No. It’s great. He’s with… well, someone he needs to be with. But I’m going to be hounded, so I’m going into hiding. Maybe under the bed.”

 

“Ooh. Want me to barricade us in?”

 

Sam snuggles in close to him, kisses him on the jaw, and fingers the waistband of his shorts. “Yes,” she says, “yes, I do.”

 

“I’m not joking. It’s my day off tomorrow. We’ve got food. No reason to leave.”

 

Sam can’t prevent a broad grin breaking across her face. She pushes away from him for a moment and grabs her phone again. She quickly checks her emails, and as she’s browsing, a message arrives from Jamie’s GMail account, exactly the same as the text except signed at the bottom _J & M_ xx, which she recognises as Jamie trying to keep himself off her shit list. He’s been on it a few times in the past and she succeeded in making him very nervous indeed. She doesn’t need him nervous now, she needs him… well, if she’s honest, this is exactly what she needs, for him to go along with Malcolm’s schemes again, for Malcolm to have his partner-in-crime back, to have someone to rely on. That’s if Malcolm doesn’t bugger it up, of course – she’s been the one quiet, uncertain witness to their weird Scottish courtship dance over the years, and she’s aware how fragile their alliance can be at times, how contrary and self-destructive Malcolm is, how reactive and volatile Jamie is…

 

At other times, though, their connection is the most ferocious force on the planet. That’s what she’s relying on, for Malcolm’s sake, and also for Jamie’s, and, additionally, for her own desire to get a new, less mad job. Malcolm pays well, but she’s either bored out of her skull or she’s frazzled beyond standard human limits. She needs some middle ground.

 

She writes back to Jamie: _I hate you both. S xx_

 

Mark snags her around the waist from behind, pulls her close, and breathes deeply with his nose nuzzled into her hair, just behind her ear. She sighs happily and lets him curl around her, his tiredness betrayed by the way he tangles his fingers into the fabric of her nightdress, the humming sound he makes as he relaxes, and his eyelids fluttering closed even as he kisses her neck.

 

“Go to sleep,” she says. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

 

 

** Saturday **

 

The television’s unplugged, the laptop is off, all phones have had their batteries removed, and the windows facing the road (if you can call the stone-pocked dirt track a _road_ because Jamie’s car expressed its doubts in painful clanks and revs) are closed and locked with the blinds down. It feels like they’re on the run for an actual legitimate reason beyond _we don’t want to talk to anyone_ , and that’s fine. Jamie has no desire to interact with anyone whatsoever.

 

They’re in a small, isolated holiday cottage on the northwest coast, having visited Thurso and decided there were still too many people around for comfort. Jamie has no idea what the nearby village is called, and Malcolm doesn’t care what it’s called, and it suits them just fine. Jamie found the cottage online, phoned the owner and offered a thousand pounds for a week, gave him Malcolm’s credit card over the phone (which worked, god bless Sam), and failed to impress on the old boy the importance of _leaving them the fuck alone_. The owner insisted on meeting them at the door, introduced himself as Bob, waved a hand at Malcolm and said, _Don’t I know you?_ Which forced Jamie to launch into an impromptu monologue about the consequences that would befall Bob if he mentioned to anybody that they were here – consequences which mostly involved petrol and old tyres, as well as the nearby cliffs and ocean, making them quite elementally harmonious consequences, though Jamie hadn’t really intended that.

 

Malcolm claimed the master bedroom, the only one with a double bed, without any pretence at consultation. Within an hour of getting the keys off Bob, Malcolm was asleep again. Jamie sat in the lounge, ignoring the television, unplugging the phone, and settling down with a book selected indiscriminately from the shelf. It turned out to be about otters. Jamie decided a few pages in that he wouldn’t mind being reincarnated as an otter, which are sort of like weasel mermaids and don’t need to worry about anything much besides catching fish and sliding down mud-banks. He’s good at sliding in mud, and his brothers taught him how to fish, so he reckons he has all the basic qualifications.

 

When he’d read everything he could about otters, he found himself alone with his thoughts, which were incredibly disturbing. The bees in his brain were beginning to swarm. He couldn’t remember what you’re supposed to do when there’s a bee swarm, but he did know that you’re not supposed to run. Running doesn’t help.

 

That first night, he waited until Malcolm was in the shower before pulling the linen off the single bed in the spare room, hauling the mattress off the frame, and dragging everything into the conservatory, which has its own small fridge, a TV, the best possible phone signal out here in the back of beyond, and, most importantly, a door he can lock from the inside and isolate himself from the rest of the cottage. When Malcolm realised what he was doing, he called Jamie several harsh names and then went back to bed. Jamie holed up in the conservatory with the unplugged TV, his silent phone, and a book about sailing, at the end of which he was seriously considering abandoning Malcolm and running off to grow a beard and become a solitary mariner. He’s aware that he’s sulking, but he doesn’t care; he’ll sulk if he wants to, fuck-you-very-much.

 

For the first couple of days, Malcolm lets him get on with it. As far as Jamie can tell, Malcolm spends Friday, the day he’s meant to be holding court with a hand-picked selection of the country’s top reporters and making himself out to be humbled while somehow still a victim of injustice, lying in bed eating Pringles and playing Angry Birds on the new phone Sam had supplied in his holdall, a phone only Jamie and Sam (and presumably Malcolm’s sister) have the number for. Jamie microwaves them some beans, somehow conjures up some toast without setting the place alight, and Malcolm, despite his obvious disappointment at the continuing lack of real food, sits with him in the conservatory where they eat and watch the rain fade away in time for a tentative pink and orange sunset. Jamie fidgets; Malcolm looks as though he’s ready to doze off again, which is beginning to actually worry Jamie at this stage, but quite a few things are worrying him and Malcolm actually _resting_ for the first time in decades is not at the top of the list.

 

There wasn’t much risk of Malcolm trying to sleep beside him again, what with the central heating and the fluffy blankets, but he still felt the need to barricade himself into the conservatory and hide like a tiny startled mammal. He’s spent his time out here in the precise geographical centre of fuck-off nowhere trying to _avoid_ analysing why he feels the need to retreat from Malcolm, by whom he has never felt threatened, physically or otherwise, but the time for avoidance is rapidly running out. Not only is Malcolm becoming suspicious, anxious, and storing up the energy for a show-down, but Jamie’s getting tired of it all.

 

He needs a fucking _break_.

 

He’s just on the verge of figuring out how he’s going to confront the turmoil of emotion that’s threatening to rip him apart like a parasitic wasp emerging from an unfortunate caterpillar, when Malcolm opens his big fat mouth and ruins everything.

 

He’s outside, Malcolm is. When he’s awake he’s often outside, as though he’s fucking fooling _anybody_ into thinking he’s been chained up in solitary confinement for the last year and a half instead of (as Jamie learned from Sam) in charge of the strawberry patch and one of the twelve chicken coops. He won extra privileges for his chickens producing the most eggs for three months in a row, but there he sits on the sad grey picnic bench in the yard, looking out to the cliffs on one side and the hills on the other, expression as wistful as if he’d not seen the sun since his long-forgotten youth.

 

Jamie makes the fatal mistake of taking a book outside on the bright and sunny Saturday morning, and sitting cross-legged on the garden wall. He’s reading the book about sailing again, just in case he ever gets the chance to try it. For a while, Malcolm gets on with reading the paper (delivered by Bob who _will not fuck off_ no matter how creatively Jamie threatens him) and ignores Jamie entirely. It’s an idyllic state of affairs, and as such cannot last. They sit in entirely acceptable silence for more than an hour, but on some unheard cue Malcolm puts the paper down on the table, takes off his glasses, and stares at Jamie until he has to peer over his book at him.

 

Malcolm says, “I’ve missed you.”

 

Jamie tries to decide whether to run from him, kill him with the hardback book, or just pretend he hadn’t heard that, but the hair on the back of his neck is tingling with static and nerves, so he closes the book and puts it down on the wall, and fixes Malcolm with the most innocent, clueless, wide-eyed expression he can manage.

 

“I haven’t been anywhere, Malc, I’ve been sitting here for fucking ages.”

 

“Fucking twat,” Malcolm snaps, grabs for the _Telegraph_ , and glares at page twelve until Jamie can almost see smoke rising from the paper. And he could play along, he could go ahead and pretend part of him hasn’t been waiting years to hear something like that, to hear that Malcolm spares him a thought when he’s not around, but he’s beyond angry – a place he’s heard rumours about, a place of calm, focussed serenity, but apparently other people’s anger doesn’t stretch as far, or feature quite so much dramatic scenery as his, because he knows anger but he’s never been to the far side of it before.

 

He’s there now. He wants to explode, but someone’s damped his fuse, forcing him to think harder, and all he can do is snatch Malcolm’s paper out of his hands, throw it down the garden, grab him by the collar and bare his teeth at him. Malcolm stares back with the sort of expression normally reserved for snake handlers when dealing with something rather more venomous than they expected to find in this particular garden, and Jamie remembers he has to actually say something.

 

“You missed me,” he grits out between clenched teeth.

 

Malcolm carefully pries Jamie’s fingers off his collar and moves back on the bench until he can actually focus on him again. “Yeah. I fucking missed you, okay? Is that a concept you can cope with, or is it too much of a human nuance for you to grasp, you fucking reprobate amphibian?”

 

“You mean you missed having someone follow you around and do your dirty work and fucking suck your fucking cock?”

 

“They were all good things, yeah.”

 

“I _knew_ it, I fucking _told_ Sam-”

 

“Just shut up.” Malcolm’s using a strange, careful tone with him, and that’s what causes Jamie’s mouth to snap shut. Malcolm’s eyes seem to search Jamie’s face for a moment, then he huffs a little sigh and looks away. “Never mind.”

 

“Don’t you try and fucking pull that one on _me_ , pal!” Jamie grabs for him again, but Malcolm pushes himself up and away from the bench, away from Jamie, and out of reach. “That is not gonnae fucking _work_ on _me!_ You got something to say? Fucking _say it_ , you old bastard!”

 

Malcolm shakes his head, but then he opens his mouth to speak. Jamie snatches a stray newspaper page from the table, screws it up and chucks it at him.

 

“No, no, you just shut the fuck up right now.”

 

“Make your fucking mind up-”

 

“ _I’ve_ got something to say, okay? So shut up and fucking _listen_. I fucking _hate_ you, Malc, okay? You’ve got no idea how much I fucking hate you.”

 

“Is that it?”

 

“I’ve tried – for years I’ve fucking _tried_ , and you, you know what you are? – you’re a Halloween decoration still in the shop on November the first, you’re a joke, you’re like someone on a rugged mountaintop shouted _release the kraken_ and all they fucking get is lukewarm calamari and shigellosis, you’re a fucked-out old racehorse with a future as household fucking _adhesive_ , and – hey – do you think I haven’t had options, eh, Malc? If you think women aren’t interested in me, you’re fucking _wrong_ , and men too – I was seeing my ex-wife again – you know she’s got a kid? Eight years old, needs a dad, that should’ve been me, it should’ve fucking _been me_ , but I couldn’t because _you,_ the ghost of Fuckmass past, you’ve left barbs in my skin and if anyone else tries to fucking touch me it fucking _hurts_. And I’ve had _job offers_ – Holyrood, they fucking _headhunted_ me, Jamie MacDonald, they said, he gets shit done - and I said no, I told them to fuck off because it wouldn’t be any fun without you. You’ve ruined my entire fucking _life_ , you hinge-jawed, ectothermic, parasitic _cunt_.”

 

Malcolm watches as Jamie attempts to throttle the air with his grasping hands, impotent rage dissipating like toxic steam until he’s sweating and panting and looks about ready to either collapse or bolt.

 

“I know,” Malcolm says, “that’s what I was trying to _say_. I love you too.”

 

Jamie bolts.

 

***

 

It takes Malcolm a very respectable and restrained twenty minutes before he decides he can’t fucking take it anymore and goes after Jamie.

 

Among Malcolm’s many and varied and often very rare talents, an ability to find Jamie when he doesn’t want to be found has never featured. And among the very few, very specific things Malcolm finds difficult to deal with, the countryside has always featured prominently.

 

Searching for Jamie among the lumpy hills, the fast-flowing streams, the hideous, tangled bracken and heather, and the loose rocks that want to trip him up and kill him, is actually one of the most frustrating and impossible tasks Malcolm has faced in a long career filled with frustrating and impossible tasks. He wanders for almost an hour, swatting at bitey insects, trying to catch a glimpse of movement or the dark scruff of Jamie’s hair or the violent yellow of his stupid t-shirt, but he was born to have concrete beneath his feet and he knows he’s never going to cover much ground. If he goes back to the cottage and waits Jamie out he could well be there forever, if he doesn’t have some kind of meltdown in the meantime, so he just keeps going, picking his way over damp, brownish turf strewn with stones, down a gentle slope towards water he thinks must be the sea because it’s got some waves in it. The waves are lapping up against a short, fat crescent of beach, and Malcolm trudges towards it, feet finally crunching over coarse sand. He can cope with sand, and he’s under the vague Boy-Scout impression that if he stays in sight of water, he can’t get too lost.

 

The sea is grey, cold, and frothy. Malcolm stands just beyond its reach and tries to focus on the horizon, where an ocean liner is outlined against the sky. A couple of seals watch him from the surf, a scattered flock of sea birds wheel and dip overhead, and Malcolm takes a moment to meditate on how much he fucking hates it out here, away from the comforting city lights and noise, with dirt underfoot, and the air filled with fetid seaweed stench and some type of pollen that makes his lungs clench and his eyes water instead of the things that air _ought_ to be filled with, such as exhaust fumes and the sounds of people on their phones and the nauseating smell of fast food.

 

He feels tired, but not in the bone-deep way he used to feel tired. This is more exercise than he’s had in days, and the backs of his legs ache from walking on ridiculous terrain, and he hasn’t really eaten properly either. And he’s worried. Jamie’s more adaptable than him, he’s seen the wee bugger shimmy up a tree and wade across a river (not on the same occasion) but he’s still very much a city boy, born and bred. Jamie can proudly trace his ancestry back though the southwest slums for at least five generations, given enough alcohol and access to ancestory.com, while Malcolm’s parents are both from somewhere near here, he was born out here before his mum took him south, long before he can remember, which makes him even more uncomfortable and itchy in the midge-infested air. He wants to go home, and he’s not thinking about London.

 

He is, inescapably, thinking about Jamie.

 

In particular he’s thinking about him lost out here forever, or eaten by sea lions, or carried off by an eagle (he does look a bit like a demented rabbit, it’d be an easy mistake to make from a swooping altitude). Are there wolves up here? Maybe bears? There’s definitely big cats, you hear about them all the time – pumas and panthers on the loose. Jamie could probably win a fight with a wolf, but maybe not a panther. Malcolm stands on the beach as the sea inches towards his feet, and tries very hard to pretend he doesn’t give a fuck if Jamie gets mauled by a panther, but given he’s just unambiguously declared his love for the man he’s not even fooling himself, let alone the seals, who are clearly judging him with their big black eyes.

 

He folds his arms against the cold, pulling his thin coat around him and fails to supress a shiver. Eventually, he’ll have to go back, but he pretends for a moment that he’s out here because he wants to be, shovels a little ditch in the sand with the toe of his shoe and watches foamy water trickle in with the tide. He’s getting quite interested in dragging the ditch round in a spiral when something thuds him in the arm.

 

He looks up. Something else just about misses his nose and zips off into the sand. Jamie’s sitting on a rocky outcrop about ten meters away, flicking pebbles at him and looking pretty much ready to kill something.

 

“Pack it in,” Malcolm snaps, trying to deflect the next missile with his arm.

 

Jamie shrugs, bounces a worryingly large pebble in his hand.

 

“I’m not,” he says, “going back to how it was. I’m not doing it.”

 

Malcolm watches the pebble. Up into the air and back down into Jamie’s palm. “What’re you talking about?”

 

Jamie throws the stone with violent force, but out towards the sea, where it makes a quiet splash and sinks immediately. “What the fuck do you _think_?” he snarls. “You and me, you spineless bastard. I’m not doing it again.”

 

Malcolm ignores the feeling of every organ in his body clenching, preparing to get it over with and just die right here, where the tide can slowly come in and claim him.

 

“Is that why you’re running around out here trying to get yourself killed?” he snaps.

 

“What?” Jamie scrabbles around and finds something else to lob at him; Malcolm ducks ineffectually and a bit of driftwood bounces off his shoulder. “Fuck you, Malc. I was trying to clear my head. What did you go and fucking _say that_ for? You’re nae gonnae spin me, pal. I’m not going back to sneaky-creeping around, not for any cunt, and not for you.”

 

Malcolm nods slowly, backing away a few steps. The idea of – there’s no escaping the phrase – _coming out_ to the press makes the inside of his skin itch. They can’t hang you out to dry for liking cock any more, but they can get you (and all they want from life is to _get you_ ) by questioning your motives for keeping it secret, and they can ask probing questions about his doomed-before-it-began marriage, and Jamie’s ex-wife who will no doubt admit she’s been seeing him recently, and then there’s Kelly, who could say literally anything, and the half-dozen women Malcolm has failed with since Jamie left him… the press can brand him a liar – hell, they’ve already done that, he _is_ a liar, that’s why he’s spent the last eighteen months learning basic carpentry and trying not to attract anyone’s attention despite the overwhelming urge to psychologically fuck with guards and fellow inmates alike (he succeeded and is _very_ fucking proud of himself). But accusations of dishonesty in his career are one thing – he’s a man who’s willing to sacrifice his integrity _for his country_ – but suggestions of dishonesty in his personal life will stick with him beyond the grave.

 

Which, he’s decided, is going to have to be fine, isn’t it? He’s tried to resign himself to spending the rest of his life without Jamie, because he’s _had_ to try. It was the reality until a few days ago. But it’s only been six years and look where he’s ended up.

 

He’s got no interest in examining why he can’t cope without the little bastard; it’s just a fact, it just _is_. And what’re the options? If he wanted to, _really_ wanted to, of course he could fucking _spin_ Jamie into playing the old game again, but what would the point be in that? Jamie would be fucking miserable, and not only would that drive Malcolm completely insane, he’s got no desire of his own to spend the rest of his life sneaking and hiding and watching his back. If Jamie thinks he enjoys hiding in the shadows, he’s mad.

 

He pulls his coat around him tighter, looks up at Jamie, squinting into the sunlight. “I know,” he says, “we’ll do it your way.”

 

Jamie doesn’t look impressed. “Do you actually know what my way is? It’s not about the fucking _press_ , Malc.”

 

“I know.”

 

“Do you? Try this – my nephew is getting married in October. Come to the wedding with me.”

 

“Fine.”

 

“And we don’t introduce you as a fucking _friend_. I don’t care about the terminology, but other people do, okay? This is what I’m talking about – it’s not just about us, it’s everyone, it’s family. If we’re doing this, you’re my – my fucking _partner_ , okay?”

 

“Fucking-partner. Okay.”

 

“Shut the fuck up and listen. My family will want to _talk_ to you, and _know things_ about you, and my brothers will judge the ever-loving fuck out of you - ”

 

“Yeah, yeah. Look, wait till you meet my mum, she’s an un-iced fruitcake. I fucking _know_. I do understand how human relationships work, I’m not a fucking lizard, am I?”

 

Jamie shrugs, unconvinced on that score. Malcolm decides it’s _his_ turn, grabs a pebble off the sand and flicks it at Jamie’s foot. It bounces off a rock, and Jamie’s scowl turns sour.

 

“The fuck was that for?”

 

“Leaving. That was you, remember? You think _I_ ruined _your_ life? You’ve no idea, son.”

 

“Aye, well, I came back, didn’t I?”

 

“And then you go and fucking run off into the fucking wildlife-infested wilderness! I could’ve found you dead out here, you could’ve been raped by a seal or scooped up by a pelican, or, or…”

 

“Your old mam never took ye tae the zoo much, did she?”

 

“No - and she’s gonnae fucking _hate_ you, by the way.”

 

“Good.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Fucking _fine_ by me.”

 

They stand there, Malcolm on the beach, Jamie still balanced on the rocks, and watch each other carefully for a moment. It’s gone midday, the sun doing its best to blaze above them, and the tide is lapping against the backs of Malcolm’s heels. He glances round at the retreating surf, and when he looks back up, Jamie’s scrambling down the rocks towards him. He lands on the sand with a dull thud, and starts walking back up towards the cottage.

 

***

 

They take a few detours which are more or less intentional; along the shore, around a couple of hillocks, and at one point they meet a few friendly sheep. As they walk, they talk. Tentatively at first, and then more freely, and then as they approach the cottage from a direction neither of them quite expected, Jamie carefully takes Malcolm’s hand. There’s no resistance, and then, after a moment, there’s a brief squeeze, and it’s okay.

 

The afternoon manages to be warm, with the sunlight slanting in through the conservatory windows. Another wave of exhaustion carries Malcolm to bed, and Jamie sits alone and reads another book he’s found about deep-sea fishing. He’s saved quite a bit of money, and while his flat is definitely too small for two people, meaning there will be house-buying in the near future, he’s decided he’s going to get a boat, a little one, and even though he’s not interested in fishing, he reckons he’d make a pretty decent sailor. He can do all the knots, and he remembers bits of his Uncle Frank’s old sea shanties well enough to improvise the rest.

 

When the sky begins to turn a pinky-orange colour, he takes it as an excuse to sneak silently into the bedroom. The heavy curtains are drawn, and once Jamie’s shut the door behind him, the darkness is pretty much complete. He strips down to his boxers and carefully climbs into bed beside Malcolm, who doesn’t stir. Jamie puts an arm around him, nuzzles his face against Malcolm’s back, and lies there until he falls asleep.

 

It’s Malcolm that wakes him hours later, in the grainy greyness of dawn, stirring and stretching and making groany morning noises. Jamie blinks his eyes open, then shuts them again as that old, cold finger of doubt slides up his spine and he prepares to be left all alone.

 

But Malcolm turns, and slides an arm over Jamie’s waist, and rests his head against his shoulder, and says, quietly, “Let’s go home.”


End file.
